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MISCELLANIES 

(Second Series) 



Peg Woffington 



MISCELLANIES 

(Second Series) 



BY 

AUSTIN DOBSON 



" ATon ulla Musis pagina gratior^ 
Quam quce severis ludicra jungere 
Novii, fatigatamque nugis 
Utilibus recreare mentemy 

Johnson to Cave. 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1901 



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FEB, 26 1902 

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Copyright, igor, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



First edition printed 
December, 1901, 




To 

the Illustrator of 
**The Ballad of Beau Brocade,' 
" > and 

"^ ** The Story of Rosina " : — 

to 

HUGH THOMSON, 

these pages are inscribed 

by 

his attached Friend 

Austin Dobson. 



« LH Envy crave f and Avarice save; 

Let Folly ride her circuit; 
I hold that — on this side the grave — 

To find one^s vein and work it^ 
To keep one's wants both fit and few 

To cringe to no condition^ 
To count a candid friend or two — 

May bound a 7nan's ambition,** 



May, 1901. 



PREFACE. 



THE " Essays and Introductions" in Part I 
of this Volume need no explanation. They 
are, mainly, from that Eighteenth Century stock 
which has supplied the majority of their prede- 
cessors. They appeal to the same sympathetic 
audience and they are subject to the same limi- 
tations. For the ** Occasional Verses and 
Inscriptions" of Part II., on the contrary, a 
word of preface is required. Some of them 
have been composed since the poems included 
in the series of which this is Volume Eleven, 
were first collected ; one or two, incredible as 
it may seem, were overlooked by their writer 
when that collection was made; others again, 
though then intentionally omitted, have since 
been enquired for by friendly readers. Finally, 
a wish has been expressed in several quarters 
that a few specimens of the little votive pieces 
dispersed in various presentation copies of the 



viii Preface. 

author's works, should have the advantage of a 
wider publicity. Thus it comes about that 
the last pages of the book, in the historic words 
of Mr. Wegg, "drop into poetry." May they 
fall upon ears as attentive as those of Mr. 
Nicodemus Boffin ! Like Time, he was an 
eminent dust contractor, but at least he was 
appreciative. 

AUSTIN DOBSON. 
Ealing J May^ igoi. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 
Essays and Introductions. 

PAGE. 

Mrs. Woffington 3 

The " Grub Street " of the Arts 34 

A Paladin of Philanthropy 56 

The Story of the «' Spectator " 88 

« Dear Mrs. Delany " 109 

The Covent-Garden Journal 127 

On certain Quotations in Walton's " Angler " . . . 157 

« Vader Cats " 170 



PART II. 

Occasional Verses and Inscriptions. 

PAGE. 
A Ballad of the Queen's Majesty (June 22, 1897) . 187 

A Madrigal (Choral Songs, 1899) 189 

For a Floral Wreath (January 22, 1901) 190 



X Contents. 

PAGE. 

Rank and File (South Africa, 1 900- 1) 191 

A Postscript to Goldsmith's " Retaliation " . . . . 192 
Verses read at the Omar Khayyam Dinner (March 

25. 1897) : . . . . 195 

For a Copy of "The Compleat Angler " 199 

The Collector to his Library 201 

For " An Appendix to the Rowfant Library "... 203 

" Good Luck to your Fishing " 205 

<* When this old World was new " ( Villanelle) . . 206 

For a Copy of the " Vicar of Wakefield " {Rondeau) 207 

After a Holiday 208 

For a Charity Annual (Rondeau) 210 

On a Picture by Hoppner (" The Jessamy Bride ") . 211 

The Philosophy of the Porch 213 

The Holocaust 216 

The Street Singer ( Villanelle) 218 

The Ballad of the Bore (Ballade) 219 

'^vXy [Virelai Nouveau) 221 

Notes of a Honeymoon ( Triolets) 223 

« Change " (Rondel) 227 

« Fair " (Rondel) 228 

To One who bids me Sing 229 

The Song of the Sea Wind 230 

Love's Quest 232 

To a Lady (with a volume of Herbert) 233 

For a Copy of " The Story of Rosina " 235 

To Lord de Tabley (in acknowledgment of a Vol- 
ume of Poems) 236 

To Lady Dorothy Nevill (with a Memoir of Hor- 
ace Walpole) 237 

To Edmund Gosse (with a First Edition of « Ata- 

lanta in Calydon ") 238 



Contents. xi 

PAGE. 

To the same (with Churchill's Poems, 1763) . . . 239 

To the same (with a Memoir of Horace Walpole) . 240 

To the same (with « At the Sign of the Lyre ") . . 240 
To the same (with Vincent Bourne's " Poetical 

Works") 241 

To the same (with Goldsmith's « Selected Poems ") 241 

To the same (with Walton's "Lives") 242 

To the same (with eight volumes of the author's 

Works) 242 

For Locker's "London Lyrics," 1 88 1 244 

To Frederick Locker (a Dedication) 245 

To Edmund Clarence Stedman (a Dedication) . . 246 

To Brander Matthews (with a Volume of Verses) . 247 

To H. C. Bunner (with a Volume of Verses) . . . 248 
To George H. Bough ton, R. A. (with a Volume of 

Verses) 249 

To Richard Watson Gilder (with a Volume of 

Verses) 250 

To Laurence Hutton (with a Volume of Verses) . 251 
Epigrams (" On the Poetry of Artifice," " On Di- 
dactics in Poetry," " On a Catalogue Rai- 

sonne") 252 

Verses Written for the Menu of the Omar Khayyam 

Club 253 

Hill and Valley 254 

« Rose, in the Hedgerow Grown " 256 

A Ballad of Antiquaries 257 

Regrets (after Joachim du Bellay) 261 

Regrets (after Joachim du Bellay) 262 

To Monsieur De La Mothe Le Vayer (after Moliere) 263 
The Ballad of Bitter Fruit (after Theodore de 

Banville) 264 



xii Contents. 

PAGE. 

"Albi, ne Doleas" (Hor. i. 33) 266 

A Song of Angiola on Earth 267 

A Song of Angiola Dead 270 



Notes 275 



PART I 



ESSAYS AND INTRODUCTIONS. 



MRS. WOFFINGTON. 

THE readers of Walton's eloquent life of 
Donne will remember in what strange 
wise the great Dean of St. Paul's caused 
his last likeness to be drawn. Wrapped in a 
winding sheet '' tied with knots at his head 
and feet, and his hands so placed, as dead 
bodies are usually fitted to be shrouded and 
put into the grave, . . . with his eyes shut, and 
with so much of the sheet turned aside as might 
show his lean, pale and death-like face" — he 
was depicted by ** a choice Painter ; " and was 
thus afterwards carved in stone on the monu- 
ment which stands in the southeast aisle of St. 
Paul's. The history of Art has seldom to 
record such unshrinking departures from the 
orthodox half and three-quarter lengths, looking 
to left or right, which people our galleries. But 
in the national collection at St. Martin's Place 
is a portrait which, in some measure, deviates 
as frankly from the conventional ; and yet 
belongs to an epoch far less imaginative than 
that of Donne. It represents a figure in a bed, 
the curtain of which is turned back. The heap 
3 



4 MiscellanieSj Second Series. 

only is visible, and wears a small lace cap drawn 
closely round the face, which is that of a hand- 
some middle-aged woman, apparently in failing 
health. The hair, which shows underneath the 
cap, is dark. ; so are the eyes. There is a faint 
smile at the corner of the lips ; and a curious 
indefinable impression is conveyed to the spec- 
tator that the head alone is alive, or, in other 
words, that the body to which it belongs has 
lost the power of motion. This impression is 
correct. The painting, which is by Roubillac's 
friend Arthur Pond, depicts the once-famous 
actress, Margaret, or *' Peg" Woffington, the 
incomparable Millamant and Modish, the 
unrivalled Wildair, of the Georgian stage ; the 
accomplished and majestic Monimia, Calista, 
Roxana, Palmira of a crowd of stately and 
sonorous old-world tragedies. It was ex- 
ecuted about 1758, soon after its subject had 
been suddenly struck down by paralysis, and 
had definitely retired from Covent Garden 
Theatre. From a biographical point of view, 
Mrs. Woffington's fate has been curious. She 
has been made (as one of her critics has said) the 
heroine of a romance which is more than half a 
memoir: she has been made the heroine of a 
memoir which is more than half a romance. 
The function of the following pages is more 



Mrs. Woffington. 5 

practical, since they pretend to do no more than 
recapitulate the leading incidents of Margaret 
Woffington's career as they have been as- 
certained by her most recent biographers. 
Among these, in particular, must be mentioned 
the late Augustin Daly, whose sumptuous 
privately printed volume^ collects and embodies, 
with the patience of a specialist and the loyalty 
of an enthusiast, all the known circumstances of 
the actress's life. 

II. 

At some time between 1718 and 1728 — for it 
does not seem practicable to fix the date exactly 
— a certain Madame Violante was in the habit 
of providing entertainment to those of the 
Dublin play-goers for whom the two established 
theatres in Aungier Street and Smock Alley had 
ceased to afford any adequate attraction. A 
Frenchwoman with an Italian name, Madame 
Violante was by profession a tumbler and tight- 
rope dancer, and had built a booth at the back 
of a house fronting upon Fownes's Court, 
and close to College Green. Here, among 
other daring feats by herself and company, she 
was accustomed, as a crowning exploit, to 
traverse the high rope with two baskets, each 
1 Woffington : A Tribute ^ New York, 1888. 



6 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

containing a child, suspended to her feet. That 
this sensational exhibition — perhaps far less 
dangerous than it seemed — was attended by 
accident, is not recorded. But history, discreet 
as to the identity of one of the small occupants 
of the baskets, has disclosed that of the other. 
Her name was Margaret Woffington ; and she 
was the elder daughter of a journeyman brick- 
layer, then dead, and of a living mother, who 
took in washing. When, by familiarity, 
Madame Violante's periculous performance had 
lost its interest, she left Dublin for other 
towns ; and the dark-eyed child who had been 
wont to swing beneath her, returned home once 
more to cry *' halfpenny salads" about the 
streets, or to fetch water from the Liffey for 
her mother, now keeping a small huckster's 
shop in the poorest part of Ormond Quay. 
The young gentlemen from College Green 
patronised the tiny water-cress merchant with 
the bright eyes and apt answers ; and by the 
time the whirligig of Madame Violante's wander- 
ings had brought her round once more to the 
Irish capital, little Woffington was growing 
into a graceful girl. This, from what follows, 
must have been in 1728 or 1729. For it was 
just at the period when London had gone 
** horn mad " over the exceptional success of 



Mrs. Wofflngton. 7 

John Gay's audacious Beggar's Opera. One of 
the collateral developments of that success was 
the representation of the piece by children ; and 
Madame Violante, quick to shoot the flying 
folly, promptly organised a Lilliputian troupe 
for the Irish market. Little Peg Woffington 
was cast for Polly ; and soon distanced all her 
juvenile — one might almost say infantile — rivals, 
not only by her native precocity, but by the 
positive charm of her acting. Her supremacy 
in this way was the more remarkable, because 
the energetic Frenchwoman seems to have been 
unusually fortunate in securing clever children 
for her performers. Several of her pupils 
subsequently became distinguished either on the 
Irish or the English boards. Her Peachum 
was a boy who grew into the more than 
respectable comedian, Isaac Sparks ; John 
Barrington was her Filch ; and Betty Barnes 
(afterwards Mrs. Martin), her miniature 
Macheath. To these Mr. Daly adds, as 
Lockit, the solemn and highly-dignified Bensley ; 
but here there must be some misconception, 
for Bensley was not born. The success which 
these small players obtained had curious results. 
The Smock Alley company of grown-ups, jealous 
of their youthful competitors, procured from the 
Mayor an order to close Madame Violante's 



8 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

establishment, upon the pretence that it was in- 
jurious to their own less popular efforts. There- 
upon the Dublin people, with the opportune 
aid of the Earl of Meath, incontinently subscribed 
for the erection of a special theatre in Rains- 
ford Street, beyond the pale of His Worship's 
jurisdiction; and here in 1729, the Lilliputians 
entered upon a fresh career of prosperity.^ 

For the Polly of the Violante troupe these 
things were not without their profit. She was far 
too young to marry a Duke as did her London 
rival, Lavinia Fenton ; but by and by the mana- 
gers of the Aungier Street house, certain clever 
brothers of the name of Elrington, began to take 
notice of the good-looking girl, to give her the 
run of the theatre, and to aid her generally in 
qualifying for what, to all appearance, was to 
be her special vocation in life. Madame 
Violante, too, continued to instruct her young 
friend, who was soon playing hoyden and other 
parts. From Madame Violante it must also 
have been that Peg Woffington acquired her 

* History (especially stage history) repeats itself; and 
this conflict between Smock Alley and Rainsford Street 
recalls that earlier struggle, referred to in Hamlet, between 
Shakespeare's Company at the Globe and the Children of 
the Chapel — the " little eyases, that cry out on the top of 
question " — at the Blackfriars Theatre. 



Mrs. Woffington, 9 

excellent knowledge of French ; and no doubt 
the discipline of the French acrobat helped to 
improve and develop a figure that even in its 
unkempt infancy had been remarkable for its 
grace and symmetry. We next hear of her in 
connection with a play, a scene of which, 
perpetuated by Frank Hayman's brush, long 
decorated one of the old supper-boxes at 
Vauxhall. This was The Devil to Pay ; or, the 
Wives Metamorphosed of Charles Coffey, a 
deformed Dublin schoolmaster, who had already 
produced a ballad-opera in imitation of Gay. 
He had followed this up in 173 1 by the above- 
mentioned piece, in which another excellent 
actress and later rival of Miss Woffington, 
Catherine Clive (then Miss Raftor) had made 
her first real hit at Drury Lane. The Dublin 
exponent of Nell, the Cobbler's wife, was Peg 
Woffington ; and her rendering of the part was 
entirely satisfactory both to the public and the 
author, who is said to have declared that she had 
done as much to make the character as he had. 
What was more, he persuaded the elder Elring- 
ton to take her into the Aungier Street com- 
pany. The manager was nothing loth, and on 
the 1 2th February, 1734, Peg Woffington made 
her first appearance at the Dublin Theatre Royal 
in the part of Ophelia. 



10 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

At this time, if the date of her birth be cor- 
rectly given as i8th October, 171 8, she was fif- 
teen, and probably wore a costume in which she 
looked as absurd, to our eyes, as Iphigenia in 
the hoop of Madame de Genlis. She is 
affirmed to have been well-grown and tall ; and 
from her earliest picture, should already have 
been notably handsome. Bricklayer's daughter 
though she was, she had an inborn distinction of 
her own which the Dublin ladies thought orig- 
inal enough to copy. Her arms — said Mrs. 
Delany in later life — were " a little ungainly" ; 
but she seems to have really possessed the long 
tapering fingers, which, when hands were care- 
fully painted in from models, recur so persist- 
ently in eighteenth-century portraits. She had 
splendid dark eyes, under well-marked brows, 
and an arch expression heightened by her 
powderless hair, and the lace cap or flat garden 
hat, with which, from her numerous portraits, 
she knew how to set off the grata protervitas 
of her beauty. That her voice was rather hard 
and unpleasing, seems to be admitted ; but, as 
she succeeded in ballad-opera, she must have 
contrived, in some way, to disguise its defects. 
In her busy progress from the Violante booth to 
the Aungier Street boards, she could scarcely, 
one would think, have found much time for cul- 



Mrs. Woffington. ii 

tivation ; but she had somehow acquired a taste 
in dress, which, combined with an uninherited 
fine-lady air and an instinctive dexterity in the 
use of a fan, sufficed to make her a fashion with 
the women. The men, too, discovered that the 
young actress from the little shop at Ormond 
Quay was more than their match at repartee ; 
and further, that although she was habitually 
good-humoured, she was also thoroughly 
capable of making herself respected. Lastly, 
she was genuinely devoted to her profession, 
scrupulously loyal to her business engagements, 
and an irreproachable daughter to the homely 
mother to whom she dutifully transferred her 
theatrical earnings. 

The change to the Aungier Street house, 
however, did not materially increase these, 
which Madame Violante had already raised to 
the then magnificent stipend of thirty shillings 
a week, the exact sum Rich had thought enough 
for Lavinia Fenton. But the young comedian 
gained largely in experience; and the perfect 
unconsciousness of her own good looks, to 
which Murphy bears testimony, made improve- 
ment easier, for it did not prevent her from un- 
dertaking parts such as Mrs. Peachum and 
Mother Midnight — assumptions which must 
have involved considerable personal disfigure- 



12 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

ment. From the Theatre Royal, after some 
temporary disagreement with Elrington, she 
went back, to Rainsford Street, then occupied 
by a new company. But about 1738, she was 
again in the Theatre Royal. The little part df 
Sylvia in the Recruiting Officer had revealed to 
her the seductions of a masculine disguise ; and 
in April of the year above mentioned, she per- 
formed for the first time the rdle with which, in 
the minds of many, she is mainly associated — 
that of Sir Harry Wildair in the Constant 
Couple of Farquhar. The Constant Couple^ 
although witnessed by the blushing heroines of 
Miss Burney, is not a performance calculated 
to commend itself, in these days, to any but 
those who have accepted and absorbed Lamb's 
ingenious plea for the artificial comedy of the 
last century; and even during Mrs. Woffing- 
ton's lifetime, there were not wanting those 
among her fervent admirers who regretted that 
so attractive an actress should have made 
choice of a '' breeches part " for her most pop- 
ular impersonation. Yet of her success as the 
Fantasio of the Augustan Age there can be no 
manner of doubt. Not only did she rival the 
first admirable creator of the character, Robert 
Wilkes, but she fairly drove Garrick himself 
from the field. Borrowing something from the 



Mrs. Wofflngton. 15 

author, and adding something to that essentially 
her own, she produced an ** altogether " of 
verve, piquancy, and vivacity, which, acquiring 
its finishing touch from the fact that she was a 
woman, rendered her absolutely irresistible to 
her audience. That, as Boaden affirms, she act- 
ually succeeded in making Farquhar's lively rake 
*' not only gay but innocent " is incredible ; but 
she never had a serious competitor during her 
lifetime, and managers invariably found " Mrs. 
Woffington as Sir Harry Wildair" a charm to 
conjure with. It was as Sir Harry that Ho- 
garth painted one of his many portraits of her. 
This belonged to Mr. Daly, and renders full 
justice to a pair of magnificent eyes which, 
when animated, must have been as eloquent as 
Garrick's. At the Club which bears Garrick's 
name, is another likeness of her by Hogarth, a 
full length representing her upon a sofa in or- 
dinary costume. This is the likeness which 
Lamb is said to have described as " dallying 
and dangerous." The Garrick Club has also 
pictures of Mrs. Woffington by Eckhardt, Mer- 
cier, and Benjamin Wilson, none of which, ex- 
cepting the Eckhardt, seems to have been re- 
produced. 



14 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

III. 

After her successful appearance as Sir Harry 
Wildair, history, without much trustworthy de- 
tail, but with a liberal allowance of decorative 
legend, transports Mrs. Woffington to England. 
Whatever were her reasons for leaving Dublin, 
— and, in all probability, they may be simply 
epitomised in the statement that she sought to 
better herself, — it is clear that in 1740 she was 
seeking employment in London. With con- 
siderable difficulty she obtained access to the 
all-powerful John Rich, then manager of Covent 
Garden, who, from his later account to Rey- 
nolds, would appear to have been completely 
conquered by the " amalgamated Calypso, 
Circe, and Armida" who invaded his sanctuary. 
*' She was as majestic as Juno," he declared, 
** as lovely as Venus, and as fresh and charming 
as Hebe." Eventually, Rich gave his visitor 
an engagement, and on the 6th November, 
1740, Miss (speedily altered in the bills to 
Mrs.) Woffington made her appearance at 
Covent Garden as Farquhar's Sylvia, with 
Theophilus Gibber as Captain Brazen. After 
Sylvia, she played Lady Sadlife in the Double 
Gallanty and Aura (another part involving male 
costume) in Charles Johnson's Country Lasses, 



Mrs. Woffington. 15 

Lastly, '* by particular desire/' she took the 
town by storm as Sir Harry Wildair, which had 
never before been acted in London by a 
woman ; and it was at once admitted that, since 
the death of Wilkes, it had never been acted so 
well. " No more," wrote an enthusiastic 
votary of Thespis and Prior : — 

" No more the Theatre I seek 

But when I'm promised there to find you ; 
All Horton's merits now grow weak, 
And Clive remains far, far behind you. 

" 'Tis thus the polished Pebble plays 

And gains awhile some vulgar praises, 
But soon withdraws its feeble rays 
When the superior Diamond blazes." 

The second stanza shows the writer to be an 
imitator rather than a rival of the author of the 
inimitable verses *'To a Child of Quality." 
But there can be no doubt that the young 
actress from Aungier Street not only eclipsed 
the beautiful Christiana Horton, but obscured 
the new-risen star of Catherine Clive. Before 
the close of the season, Mrs. Woffington had 
appeared in six or seven parts, including those 
of Phyllis in Steele's Conscious Lovers (with its 
delightful window-cleaning scene), and of the 
all-popular Cherry in the Beaux' Stratagem, 



1 6 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

Finally, for the benefit of Chetwood the 
prompter, then languishing in the King's Bench 
prison, she played Loetitia in the Old Batchelor 
to the Fondlewife of her lifelong admirer, the 
veteran Colley Gibber, whose famous Apology 
was unhappily some months old, or he might 
have included in its pages a pen-sketch of his 
new colleague, fully equal to the admirable 
vignette which he draws of Mrs. Verbruggen 
as that "finish'd Impertinent" Melantha, in 
Dryden's Marriage d-la-Mode. By this date, 
Mrs. Woffington's position was secured ; but, 
although she was too conscientious an artist to 
be a failure in anything, it was the novelty of 
the rdles of Sylvia (in the red coat and hat bien 
troussi of Captain Pinch), and of Sir Harry 
Wildair that most attracted her audience. In 
this, her first season, she performed the latter 
part no fewer than twenty times — a consider- 
able test of its popularity — and always to 
crowded houses. It is true that Walpole styles 
her*' a bad actress,'* and his friend Conway 
*' an impudent Irish-faced girl." But this was 
probably for the pleasure of being in a superfine 
minority, since both testify to her extraordinary 
popularity. Walpole says she is '* much in 
vogue " ; Conway that '' all the town is in love 
with her." 



Mrs, Woffington, ij 

On the 19th of May the season came to 
an end, and with it ended Mrs. Woffing- 
ton's engagement to Rich. Why that usually 
astute personage permitted her to leave him is 
unexplained, but in the ensuing September she 
was acting Sylvia at Drury Lane. This she 
followed up by Lady Brute in the Provoked 
Wifry and she also appeared in more than one 
of Shakespeare's comedies, notably as Rosalind 
in As You Like It, when the Celia was Mrs. 
Clive, and the Touchstone, Macklin. She 
showed her kindness of heart by tenderly nurs- 
ing one of her sick colleagues, William Mill- 
ward, and when he died, she played for his 
widow and children. But the event of this time 
was the growth of her acquaintance with Gar- 
rick, who, after his successful entry into the 
profession in October, 1 741, had been invited 
by Fleetwood to Drury Lane. There can be 
no question that from the first he was impressed 
by the charm and vivacity of the beautiful young 
Irishwoman, and it is also certain that she fully 
appreciated the supreme genius of the equally 
youthful actor (he was then but twenty-six, and 
only two years older than herself) who, at a 
bound, had risen to the kingship of the English 
stage. On Garrick's side, admiration prompted 
some of those metrical tributes which he pro- 



1 8 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

duced with such facility on all occasions, and 
his verses to ^' Sylvia " and '^ Lovely Peggy," 
are still to be read in the London^ and other 
contemporary magazines. 

" Were she arrayed in rustic weed, 
With her the bleating flocks I'd feed. 
And pipe upon mine oaten reed 
To please my lovely Peggy. 
With her a cottage would delight, 
All's happy when she's in my sight, 
But when she's gone 'tis endless night- 
All's dark without my Peggy." 

He acted Lear to his Peggy's Cordelia at 
Drury Lane on the 28th May, 1742 ; and in the 
following June they were both at Dublin, play- 
ing in the new theatre which had taken the 
place of the Smock Alley building, and to 
which they had been hastily summoned by the 
manager, Duval, in order to counteract the 
rival attractions of Quin and Mrs. Gibber at the 
Theatre Royal. As might be expected, they 
carried all before them. Mrs. Woffington as 
Silvia, Mr. Garrick as Gaptain Plume ; Mrs. 
Woffington as Lady Anne, Mr. Garrick as 
**crook'd back'd Richard," — were attractions 
to which Mrs. Gibber as Indiana and Quin as 
Young Bevil (in the Conscious Lovers) could 
make no effectual reply. So crowded indeed 



Mrs. Wofflngton, 19 

were the houses, and so sultry the season, as 
actually to bring about a kind of epidemic 
which Dublin playgoers christened the " Gar- 
rick fever." 

At Dublin Mrs. Woffington definitely added 
to her repertory what was later to be one of 
her most successful parts, that of Lady Betty 
Modish in the Careless Husband. While 
Garrick hurried back to London with Mrs. 
Gibber, she remained in Ireland to arrange for 
the education abroad of her younger sister, 
Mary, and also to select a suitable retreat for 
her mother, whom O'Keeffe remembered years 
afterwards as a respectable old lady in a velvet 
cloak, with a diamond ring and an agate snuff- 
box, going the round of the Roman Gatholic 
chapels, and chatting with her neighbours, no 
doubt upon the favourite topic of her famous 
daughter. Not long after Mrs. Woffington re- 
turned to London, she set up that curious joint 
establishment with Macklin and Garrick, and 
then with Garrick alone, which has exercised so 
many pens. The triple alliance was at Mack- 
lin's. No. 6 Bow Street, Covent Garden (which, 
by the way, had been built by the original 
Wildair, Wilkes) ; the dual association, in South- 
ampton Street, Strand. Garrick was to play 
the part of paymaster ; the lady was to act as 



20 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

hostess. But Garrick's conception of his rdle 
is alleged to have been mean, not to say miserly ; 
Mrs. Woffington, on the contrary, was over 
profuse. ** She made the tea too strong," said 
Johnson to Mr. Scott, recalling those days ; 
and Roscius grumbled at her wastefulness. 
Relating the story to Reynolds, the Doctor 
added a further detail to Garrick's grievance. 
** It [the tea] was as red as blood," he pro- 
tested. Nevertheless, the combined arrange- 
ment lasted for a considerable period ; and, at 
one time (says report), even bade fair to ripen 
into a more permanent bond. But which, in 
this connection, was " Van qui haise,'' and which 
** Vautre qui tend la jouey'' is, at this date, diffi- 
cult to affirm ; and an impartial critic may per- 
haps be pardoned for wondering whether, on 
the gentleman's side, at all events, disinterested 
affection formed as important an element as 
identity of aim and ambition. If — as Murphy 
and others maintain — the wedding-day was 
actually fixed, nothing would be more likely 
than that, as the inevitable hour approached, 
his native prudence should become more urgent 
in reminding Garrick that a lady whose hospi- 
tality was lavish, and whose admirers were 
legion, was not precisely the person to promise 
or promote a cloudless domesticity. His passion 



Mrs. Wofflngton. 21 

must have cooled appreciably as he thought of 
these things, and his doubts grew darker in 
proportion. At last he spoke out. He was 
wearing the shirt of Deianira — he ruefully con- 
fessed. Whereupon Mrs. Woffington (who had 
a fine spirit of her own), at once begged him to 
put off that classical but uncomfortable garment, 
and never to see her more, *' except in the course 
of professional business, or in the presence of a 
third person." The gifts which had been ex- 
changed between them were sent back ; but 
Gossip, already maliciously preoccupied with 
the great actor's petty weaknesses, asserts that 
he could not bring himself to part with a pair 
of diamond shoe-buckles which had been one 
of the lady's gages d' amour. A year or two 
later he married Mile. Eva Maria Violette. 
Lady Burlington's proUgie had no claim to be 
compared in charm or talent with her husband's 
first — or, more probably, his earlier — love ; but 
she worshipped her '^Davy," alive and dead, 
with a persistent devotion which Garrick could 
scarcely have hoped from the brilliant but vary- 
ing and very mutable Mrs. Woffington. 

During her connection with Garrick, Peg 
Woffington continued to act at Drury Lane. 
The records speak of her successes as Lady 
Townly in the Provoked Husband; as Portia; 



22 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

as Mrs. Ford (there is a charming picture of 
her by Haytley in this character) ; as Milla- 
mant in the Way of the World; as Mrs. Frail 
in Love for Love. Nor did she confine herself 
to impersonations which were morally or physic- 
ally attractive. She played Lady Pliant in the 
Double Dealer; she played Mrs. Day in 
Howard's Committee y not scrupling in this latter 
part, says Tom Davies of Russell Street, "to 
disguise her beautiful countenance, by drawing 
on it the lines of deformity, and the wrinkles of 
old age ; and to put on the tawdry habiliments 
and vulgar manners of an old hypocritical city 
vixen." One of her rivals at the theatre even 
at this time was Mrs. Clive, and little love 
appears to have been lost between these queens 
of the green-room. *' No two women of high 
rank ever hated one another more unreservedly," 
says the honest chronicler above quoted. 
** . . . Woffington was well-bred, seemingly 
very calm, and at all times mistress of herself. 
Clive was frank, open and impetuous ; what 
came uppermost in her mind, she spoke without 
reserve : the other bluated the sharp speeches 
of Clive by her apparently civil, but keen and 
sarcastic replies ; thus she often threw Clive off 
her guard by an arch severity which the warmth 
of the other could not parry." That she was 



Mrs. Wofflngton. 23 

"at all times mistress of herself," is, however, 
to say too much, since once when Henry the 
Fourth was being played, these animosities 
culminated in an actual combat, in which ad- 
mirers on either side freely engaged, to the 
huge joy of the caricaturists, who commemo- 
rated the fray in a plate called ''The Green 
Room Scuffle." After the rupture with Garrick, 
strained relations with that now powerful per- 
sonage were added to Mrs. Woffington's other 
tribulations, although fortunately he was not 
always acting at Drury Lane. But when, in 
1747, he became co-patentee of that theatre 
with Lacy, and reinforced the ranks of its lead- 
ing ladies by importing Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. 
Pritchard from Covent Garden, the situation 
became too difficult to maintain with dignity. 
Consequently, on the 15th April, 1748, Mrs. 
Woffington took her leave of Drury Lane as 
Phyllis in Steele's Conscious Lovers, and started 
for Paris to investigate the methods of the 
Theatre Franpais, and more particularly the 
tragic method of that most accomplished tragic 
actress. Mile. Marie-Fran^oise Dumesnil, then 
or but recently promoted from soubrette parts 
to the more important rdle of m^re. To Mile. 
Dumesnil, Garrick later gave the praise, so often 
applied to himself, of being, and not acting, the 



24 Miscellanies^ Second Series, 

character assumed. But Gibbon, who had seen 
her frequently, was less enthusiastic. He pre- 
ferred the " consummate art" of her rival, 
Mile. Clairon. 

When, after a prolonged vacation, Mrs. 
Woffington returned from the French capital, 
she betook herself to Covent Garden and to 
her old manager Rich, playing, in addition to 
her comedy parts, a good many fresh tragic 
characters, in which she shewed the not entirely 
salutary influence of her studies in the French 
School. One of these was Anne Oldfield's 
famous rdle of Andromache in the Distressed 
Mother. Another was Veturia in the Corio- 
lanus of Thomson. But although she had es- 
caped the Olive, Pritchard and Oibber coali- 
tion at the other house, she found at Oovent 
Garden a fresh antagonist in the person of 
Dodsley's Oleone, the beautiful and blue-eyed 
George Ann Bellamy, a rival as aggravating as, 
and far more mischievous than, any member of 
the elder trio. The record of the sumptuary 
feud that presently arose between Mrs. Bel- 
lamy and Mrs. Woffington recalls, in some of its 
details, Steele's pleasant story of Brunetta and 
Phyllis, with the difference that the injured 
Brunetta (Mrs. Woffington) seems to have 
gone to the length of personally chastising her 



Mrs. Woffingion, 25 

malicious competitor. Fortunately, Mrs. Bel- 
lamy was speedily abducted by one of her 
numerous admirers, and for a time Mrs. Wof- 
fington reigned at Covent Garden without dis- 
pute. Then, unhappily, Mrs. Gibber returned 
from Drury Lane, and discord began once 
more under a manager who, unlike Garrick, 
was entirely without the art of controlling those 
extremely ** kittle cattle," tragedy queens. 

" He umpire sat. 
And by decision more embroil'd the fray," — 

quotes Tom Davies from the neglected pages of 
Paradise Lost. But we may turn from these 
dissensions to one of the few authentic an- 
ecdotes which help to eke out a picture of Mrs. 
Woffington. Once, when Rich had angered 
her by his tactlessness, she refused point-blank 
to act as a substitute for the always-ailing Mrs. 
Gibber ; and, as ill-luck would have it, the dis- 
pleasure of the audience fell entirely upon her 
own devoted head. When she appeared as 
Lady Jane Grey they showed it. ** Whoever," 
says Tate Wilkinson, *' is living, and saw her 
that night will own that they never beheld any 
figure half so beautiful since. Her anger gave 
a glow to her complexion, and even added lustre 
to her charming eyes. They treated her very 



26 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

rudely, bade her ask pardon, and threw orange 
peels. She behaved with great resolution, and 
treated their rudeness with glorious contempt. 
She left the stage, was called for, and with 
infinite persuasion was prevailed on to return. 
However, she did, walked forward, and told 
them she was there ready and willing to per- 
form her character if they chose to permit her ; 
that the decision was theirs — on or off, just as 
they pleased, a matter of indifference to her." 
The *' ons " had it, continues the narrator, 
*' and all went smoothly afterwards." But the 
last words are exact only as far as that partic- 
ular evening was concerned, for in short space 
Mrs. Woffington quitted Covent Garden, and 
went back to her native island. 

Henceforth her career may be more rapidly 
summarised. When she arrived at Dublin she 
was without an engagement. But at this time 
the Smock Alley Theatre was in the hands of 
Sheridan's father, whose leading lady was the 
Mrs. Bland to whom Lamb refers in ** Old 
China." Sheridan was easily persuaded to en- 
list the services of Mrs. Woffington, and to 
inaugurate a success for himself. This was ap- 
parently the most popular period of Mrs. 
Woffington's life, for her performance of no 
more than four parts. Lady Townly, Maria, 



Mrs. Woffingion. 27 

Hermione, and Sir Harry Wildair, brought the 
Smock Alley House four thousand pounds, a 
larger sum than any theatre had previously 
gained with stock pieces. Other parts which 
she played were Cleopatra, Lady Betty Modish, 
Rosalind, Hypolita, Jane Shore, and Phyllis, 
certainly a very varied list. She was excellent 
in all ; but in the comedy and fine-lady parts 
she was supreme. Never was such a Modish, 
such aTownly I With her Irish compatriots her 
popularity was unbounded, and, in an evil hour 
it was crowned by her election to the President- 
ship of Sheridan's Beef Steak Club, an associa- 
tion which he had modelled on the London 
Association with a similar title, then some fifteen 
years old. Nothing could persuade the public, 
however, but that Sheridan's project had a con- 
cealed political significance. This belief they 
transferred to the Smock Alley performances 
and investing certain lines in Voltaire's Mahomet 
with a veiled reference to the Court party, 
proceeded to raise a riot and wreck the house. 
Mrs. Woffington's persuasive powers were in- 
voked, but without effect. Sheridan's enter- 
prise came to an untimely end, and Mrs. 
Woffington returned to London, where she still 
had admirers more steadfast and more phleg- 
matic than her excitable fellow-countrymen. 



28 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

On the 22d October, 1754, she was again play- 
ing at Covent Garden in one of her old parts, 
that of Maria in The Nonjuror. 

IV. 

As must have been gathered from the opening 
pages of this paper, Margaret Woffington had 
begun her theatrical career betimes. When she 
made her ddbut in Madame Violante's basket 
(an incident upon which the conscientious 
biographer will not insist too strongly), she 
can have been little more than a baby. When 
she played Polly Peachum she was ten or eleven ; 
she was fifteen when she appeared as Ophelia 
at the Aungier Street Theatre. Untiring in her 
devotion to her profession, she had also lived 
the full life of an energetic and emotional nature, 
and by the time she had reached her thirty- 
eighth year, it was manifest that, although her 
enthusiasm remained unabated, her exuberant 
vitality was becoming exhausted. She acted 
Celia in the Humorous Lieutenant ; she acted the 
Queen in Richard III ; she essayed, not success- 
fully, Garrick's famous part of Lothario in the 
Fair Penitent; she acted Lady Randolph in a 
brand-new tragedy which an obscure Dr. Gold- 
smith reviewed in the Monthly Review — the deep- 
mouthed Douglas of that Rev. John Home, in 



Mrs. Woffingion. 29 

whom dwellers north of the Tweed sought to 
discover a Scottish Shakespeare. Readers of 
The Virginians will recall a pleasant chapter in 
Thackeray's book where the Lambert family 
with George and Harry Warrington go to 
Covent Garden to see the Presbyterian gentle- 
man's masterpiece. But although Miss Theo- 
dosia's soft heart is touched by Mrs. Woffing- 
ton's *' beauty and acting," the author of the 
novel is true to tradition in abstaining from put- 
ting her praises into the mouth of any critical 
member of the little party. She created the 
character of Lady Randolph, it is true, but it 
was not one of her successes. 

It had been upon her own benefit, March 24, 
1757, that she had played Lothario. A few 
weeks later, she had made her last appearance. 
Tate Wilkinson, an eye-witness upon this oc- 
casion, has described in his Memoirs what took 
place, in words which it is needless to paraphrase. 
On May 3d As You Like It was being given 
for the benefit of some of the inferior actors. 
** I was standing near the wing'' — says Wilkin- 
son — "as Mrs. WoflSngton in Rosalind, and 
Mrs. Vincent in Celia, were going on the stage 
in the first act. . . , She [Mrs. Woffington] 
went through Rosalind for four acts without my 
perceiving she was in the least disordered, but 



30 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

in the fifth act she complained of great indispo- 
sition. I offered her my arm, the which she 
graciously accepted. I thought she looked 
softened in her behaviour, and had less of 
the hauteur [Wilkinson had been unlucky 
enough to incur her displeasure]. When she 
came off at the quick change of dress, she again 
complained of being ill ; but got accoutred, and 
returned to finish the part, and pronounced in 
the Epilogue Speech, "If it be true that good 
wine needs no bush — it is as true that a good 
play needs no epilogue," etc., etc. But when 
arrived at " If I were among you I would kiss 
as many of you as had beards that pleased me," 
her voice broke, she faltered, endeavoured to go 
on, but could not proceed — then in a voice of 
tremor screamed, O God I O God I [and] 
tottered to the stage door speechless, where 
she was caught. The audience of course ap- 
plauded till she was out of sight, and then sank 
into awful looks of astonishment, both young 
and old, before and behind the curtain, to see 
one of the most handsome women of the age, a 
favourite principal actress, and who had for sev- 
eral seasons given high entertainment, struck so 
suddenly by the hand of death, in such a situ- 
ation of time and place. . . ." 

She lingered for nearly three years from that 



Mrs. Woffington. 31 

fatal night ; but never again appeared behind the 
footlights. The theatrical calling was exposed to 
great temptations, she told a young Teddington 
friend who consulted her as to that profession ; 
and it would be idle to contend that her own life 
— a life of many liaisons — had been either worship- 
ful or blameless. But her days henceforth were 
passed quietly and decorously in her house by 
the Thames (Teddington Place, now Udney 
Hall), where she had for companion a Mrs. 
Barrington, widow of the John Barrington who, 
as a boy, had acted with her in the Beggar's 
Opera at Dublin. During this period she is 
said to have come under the influence of 
Wesley ; but, as Mr. Daly has pointed out, 
she had a clerical relative in the Hon. Mr. 
Cholmondeley, her sister Mary's husband, who 
had quitted the army to enter the Church, and 
who is just as likely to have turned her thoughts 
in serious directions, if her own calamity had 
not been sufficient to do so. In any case, even 
when she partially recovered, she neither sought 
to renew her old triumphs nor to revisit the 
scene of them. On the contrary, she is said 
to have occupied herself in charitable offices, 
and in knitting stockings which she distributed 
periodically to the Teddington poor. She died 
at last, on the 28th March, 1760, at a house in 



32 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

Queen Square, Westminster (no doubt that of 
her sister), where she was staying, and she was 
buried in the graveyard of the little patchwork 
parish church of St. Mary atTeddington, whose 
then incumbent was the " plain Parson Hales" 
of Pope, a rigourist who still compelled his 
erring parishioners to do public penance for 
their misdeeds. The actual site of her tomb 
is now unknown ; but a tablet now on the 
north wall of the chancel, at the back of the 
reading-desk, records the interment *' near 
this Monument" of ** Margaret Woffington, 
Spinster." Probably this memorial was erected 
by Mrs. Cholmondeley, since it includes an in- 
scription to one of her own children, who had 
died some time before. Mrs. Woffington's 
property, when due provision had been made 
for an annuity of ;£40 to her mother, went to 
Mrs. Cholmondeley, and amounted to four 
thousand pounds. John O'Keeffe, the drama- 
tist, who was living at Teddington in 1794, af- 
firms that she there built and endowed a number 
of almshouses. But Lysons, writing a few 
years later, says nothing of these ; nor is there 
any mention of them in the Parliamentary 
Report of 1824 on the Charities of Middlesex. 
Meanwhile — for the better comfort of pictur- 
esque tradition — at the east end of the High 



Mrs. Woffington, 33 

Street, next the post-office and near the Church, 
there exists to this day a low range of old- 
fashioned, wistaria-clad dwellings, with dormer 
windows, and tiny front-gardens, which con- 
tinue to be known to the neighbourhood and 
the local directory as '* Margaret Woffington's 
Cottages,*' 



THE *'GRUB STREET" OF THE ARTS. 

'X'HAT "fine madness "of incongruity which 
* tempted Charles Lamb into laughter at a 
funeral, led him, — says his best biographer, — 
at the top of Skiddaw, to think upon a certain 
ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin's Lane.^ 
Where was this favoured and fortunate ham- 
and-beef shop ? And where, under reconstruc- 
tions and renewals, is the St. Martin's Lane of 
Lamb? — the St. Martin's Lane of the last cen- 
tury ? ** It butteth," says honest John Strype in 
his Stow of 1720, " on Northumberland House 
in the Strand, and runneth Northwards beyond 
Long Acre, and the new Buildings in Cock and 
Pye Fields." In other words, it extended from 
the southern end of the present Little St. An- 
drew Street (the site of the old Cock and Pye 
Tavern), past Long Acre and St. Martin's 
Church, to a spot in the Strand then opposite 
Northumberland House, but now at the en- 
trance of Northumberland Avenue. This was 
the St. Martin's Lane of 1720; and judging 
from Evans's map, it was also the St. Martin's 
» Charles Lamb^ by Alfred Ainger, 1888, p. 72. 
34 



The " Grub Street'' of the Arts. 35 

Lane of 1799.^ Sixty years ago, its limits had 
become contracted. It had been cut into at 
Long Acre by a continuation of Cranbourn 
Street, and its southern boundary was the then 
newly completed Trafalgar Square. Ten years 
later still, directories give the southern termi- 
nation as Chandos Street and Hemings' Row. 
Hemings* Row— the '* Dirty Lane" of our 
grandfathers — disappeared in 1889 with the 
creation of Charing Cross Road, but Chandos 
Street still ends the eastern side of the Lane, 
and serves to link the old thoroughfare with 
Strype's description. For it was just above 
Chandos Street that stood an ancient turnpike, 
to which Steele seems to allude in his *' Ramble 
from Richmond to London." In that delight- 
ful " Voyage oii il vous plaira " he relates how, 
out of pure idleness, he diverted himself by fol- 
lowing in *• an Hack " the hack of a handsome 
young lady with a mask and a maid. The 
damsel's chariot was travelling '* through Long 
Acre towards St. James's." " Thereupon," says 
the vivacious essayist, ** we drove for King-street, 
to save the Pass at St. Martin's Lane." At the 
end of Newport Street and Long Acre the ve- 
hicles become entangled, and for a moment he 
1 A facsimile of Evans's « New and Accurate Plan " was 
issued with Kelly's "London Directory " for 1899. 



36 MiscellanieSy Second Series, 

gets a glimpse of his charmer *' with her Mask 
off." The chase continues " in all Parts of the 
Town " for an hour and a half, when the quarry 
is discovered to be a '' Silk-Worm," which is 
your hackney-coachman's term for those profit- 
able fares ** who ramble twice or thrice a Week 
from Shop to Shop, to turn over all the Goods 
. . . without buying anything." So Captain 
Richard Steele, after a few more vagrom ex- 
periences, goes home to scribble his " Spectator " 
thereon (it is No. 454, for Monday, August 
nth, 1712), and, if possible, to explain his erratic 
proceedings to his "Absolute Governesse " at 
her new residence in Bloomsbury Square. 

The site of the turnpike house here referred 
to is supposed to have been 28, the first number 
on the eastern side of the Lane. But the more 
important buildings were on the western side, 
and with the western side it is convenient to be- 
gin. Just beyond Parr's Bank and the present 
Free Library was Peter's Court, which Strype 
describes as **a very handsome and gentile 
Place, with good Houses, well contrived, with 
little Gardens to them," — a state of things not 
very easy to conceive at present, as Peter's Court, 
which must have gone back as far as the Garrick 
Theatre, and the narrow entrance to which was 
between Nos. in and 1 10, has now given place 



The '' Grub Street " of the Arts. 37 

to the establishment of Messrs. Chatto and 
Windus. In Peter's Court, or at its entrance, 
was one of the many coffee-houses known as 
"Tom's," and even, if we may believe Mr. 
John Ashton, ^ the best known of them, al- 
though that distinction is generally claimed for 
** Tom*s " in Russell Street, already referred to 
in the ** Tour of Covent Garden." ' But the 
most memorable building in Peter's Court must 
have been the dancing school which afterwards 
became the first studio of Monsieur Louis- 
Francois Roubillac, the sculptor, who, accord- 
ing to contemporary prints, there carved the 
statue of Handel in the character of Orpheus 
which so long ornamented the gardens at Vaux- 
hall. The Handel is said to have been the 
first original work Roubillac executed in Eng- 
land, and the date of its erection. May, 1738, 
fixes that of his residence in Peter's Court. 
How much longer he remained there is unre- 
corded, but his old studio was subsequently, for 
a long period, the home of the St. Martin's 
Lane Academy of which we hear so much in 
the middle of the last century. At the death of 
Sir James Thornhill, the material of his drawing 

1 " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," 1883, 
p. 174. 
2 " Eighteenth Century Vignettes," Third Series, p. 339. 



38 Miscellanies y Second Series, 

school in James Street, Covent Garden, came 
into the hands of his son-in-law, Hogarth. 
*' Thinking," says Hogarth, "that an academy 
conducted on proper and moderate principle 
had some use, [I] proposed that a number of 
artists should enter into a subscription for the 
hire of a place large enough to admit thirty or 
forty people to draw after a naked figure." 
The former dancing school in Peter's Court 
exactly answered to these requirements, and 
Hogarth lent his coadjutors Sir James's furni- 
ture. It was in this institution, of which 
Michael Moser was the treasurer and manager, 
and of the interior of which Hogarth himself 
painted a picture, now at Burlington House, 
that the majority of the artists of the reigns of 
George H and George HI received or com- 
pleted their educations. Reynolds, Ramsay, 
Zoffany, Wilson, Hayman, Cosway, Roubillac 
himself, Nollekens, and a host of minor names, 
were all scholars in this school, whose career of 
usefulness only ceased with the establishment in 
1769 of the Royal Academy, to which its "ana- 
tomical figures, busts, statues, etc.," were in 
course of time transferred. 

After the St. Martin's Lane Academy had 
vacated its old quarters in Peter's Court, the 
great room was pulled down and rebuilt as a 



The " Grub Street'' of the Arts. 39 

Friends' Meeting House. Whether it was here 
that — en route for the ham-and-beef shop — Lamb 
made those studies of *' uncommunicating mute- 
ness," which he has described so vividly in his 
*' Essays," his editors say not. But a Friends' 
Meeting House continued to occupy the site of 
Roubillac's old studio until far into the present 
century, when, with the march of renovation, it 
moved to the eastern side of the Lane. Beyond 
the site of Peter's Court is the Duke of York's 
(formerly the Trafalgar Square) Theatre, which 
extends over the ground once occupied by Nos. 
107 to 103, a space with many artistic memories. 
Here, for instance, at or ** behind No. 104,'* 
lived Sir James Thornhill, in a large house with 
a grand allegoric staircase painted by himself. 
One of his successors was John Van Nost, son 
of the Van Nost of Piccadilly, who rivalled 
Cheere in leaden figures, and who was credited 
with that egregious gilt statue of George I which 
once adorned the enclosure at Leicester Fields. 
Another tenant of the same house was Frank 
Hayman, Hogarth's crony and co-decorator at 
Vauxhall, who filled so many eighteenth century 
books with noses A la Cyrano and spindle-shanks. 
(His own legs, by the way, were probably his 
model, if one may judge from^those of Viscount 
Squanderfield in the '' Marriage A-la-Mode,'' 



40 Miscellaniesj Second Series. 

for whom he was the admitted sitter.) A jovial, 
careless boon-companion, he grew gouty as he 
grew older, and though, like Thornhill, he 
migrated ultimately to Dean Street, Soho, it 
may well have been in St. Martin's Lane that 
occurred the incident which Pyne relates in the 
** Somerset House Gazette." When Hayman 
was engaged upon one of the large canvasses for 
Tyers' New Room next the Rotunda at Vaux- 
hall — it would seem to have been that in which 
Britannia was represented distributing laurels to 
certain distinguished officers — the Marquis of 
Granby, who sat by Tyers' request to the artist, 
and had heard of his past prowess as a pupil of 
Broughton, proposed a preliminary set-to with 
the gloves. Hayman pleaded that he was old 
and infirm. But Lord Granby maintained that 
he, too, was no longer a chicken, and, moreover, 
that he was out of practice owing to his absence 
in Germany. The pair began accordingly, and, 
after a magnificent display of science on either 
side, Hayman, warming with the game, ** got 
home " so effectually on the ** bread basket " of 
the noble and gallant Marquis that they both, 
being heavy men, came to the ground with a 
terrific crash. Thereupon Mrs. Hayman (she 
had been the widow of Frank's friend, Fleet- 
wood, the Drury Lane manager), rushing 



The ** Grub Street'' of the Arts. 41 

frantically upon the scene, discovered her hus- 
band and the illustrious hero of Minden *' rolling 
over each other on the carpet like two enraged 
bears." ^ 

The year of Minden fight is 1759, and the 
date of the hand-to-hand conflict in which the 
popular warrior, whose bald head and blue 
uniform decorated half the signs in the kingdom,* 
figures so ingloriously must consequently be 
placed later. But the house ** behind No. 
104," or No. 104 itself, had another resident 
who is more eminent than either Hayman or 
Thornhill. In 1753, according to Malone, Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, then plain " Mr.," took up his 
abode at a house in the Lane described as 
** nearly opposite to May's Buildings" (on the 
eastern side), and ''nearly opposite to May's 
Buildings " must have been a pretty accurate 
indication of No. 104. Reynolds had not long 
returned from Italy, painting, as his franker 
friends informed him, in a manner that could 
never succeed, since it was not in the least like 
the manner of Kneller. Posterity has not con- 
firmed that sagacious prediction. Unfortunately 

1 " Somerset House Gazette," 1824, i. 78. 

2 Readers of «' Pickwick " will recall the " Marquis of 
Granby " at Dorking, where Mr. Weller senior admin- 
istered such condign punishment to the luckless Shepherd, 



42 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

for our paper, however, Reynolds made only a 
brief stay in St. Martin's Lane, and there is no 
existent list of his sitters at this date. But the 
first portrait he painted after his establishment 
in London was that of his assistant, Guiseppe 
Marchi, the Italian boy who had accompanied 
him from Rome, and who, eventually, after a 
probation in the Peter's Court Academy, 
became himself an indifferent painter and a 
capable engraver. It was, in fact, Marchi's 
picture in a turban and oriental dress, now at 
Burlington House, which prompted the unfav- 
ourable criticism quoted above. No very 
notable incident concerning Reynolds' residence 
at No. 104 has been recorded, and in the same 
year (1753) in which he came to it he moved 
higher up on the left to No. 5, Great Newport 
Street, the only other London dwelling he occu- 
pied until his final migration to No. 47, 
Leicester Fields. But it was at St. Martin's 
Lane that he was joined by his youngest sister, 
Frances, whose artistic attempts made other 
people laugh and her brother cry, and who 
figures in Boswell's pages as the ** Renny 
dear "of Johnson. 

" I therefore pray thee, Renny dear, 

That thou wilt give to me, 
"With cream and sugar soften'd well, 

Another dish of tea,"— 



The " Grub Street'' of the Arts. 43 

sang the great man, in disrespectful parody of 
Percy's " Reliques." He left her a book in his 
will, and loved her fondly in spite of her fidgetty 
peculiarities. At this date, however, Johnson 
was not yet known to Reynolds, whose acquain- 
tance he only made after Reynolds had removed 
to Great Newport Street. 

Four doors beyond No. 104, lived the por- 
trait-painter John Cartwright, a mediocrity 
whose chief claim to remembrance lies in the 
circumstance that he had been, while at Rome, 
the fellow-student of the fantastic genius Henry 
Fuseli, a circumstance which led the latter, 
when he took up his abode in town in 1778, to 
quarter himself upon his old associate. It must 
have been at No. 100 that Fuseli produced his 
extraordinary '* Nightmare," of which the suc- 
cess may be measured by the fact that it pro- 
duced some five hundred pounds to its publisher 
and some twenty to its inventor. In No. 100, 
too, he painted his ** CEdipus and his Daugh- 
ters," and planned that Cyclopean enterprise, 
the illustrated Shakespeare of Boydell. Thack- 
eray thought poorly of that " black and ghastly 
gallery," whose vast atlas folios spelled ruin to 
the worthy alderman ; and a generation accus- 
tomed to the accomplished and instructed con- 
ceptions of Mr. Edwin Abbey is hardly likely 



44 Miscellanies t Second Series, 

to sympathise greatly with the-, murky Lears 
and Macbeths of Fuseli, or even with his 
** Titania " — for all that Allan Cunningham com- 
pares it with Hogarth's" Strolling Actresses," a 
comparison which, in this connection, has a 
knell of condemnation. One wonders whether 
it was from St. Martin's Lane that Fuseli was 
summoned by Horace Walpole to try his hand 
at Dryden's Theodore and Honoria — a task 
surely more in the line of Horace's friend. Lady 
Di Beauclerk, who did the sublime studies " in 
soot water" for the *' Mysterious Mother."^ 
But in St. Martin's Lane Fuseli continued to 
reside until 1788, when he married his model, 
Miss Sophia Rawlins, of Bath, and moved to 
72, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square. 

In 1828, and, indeed, for at least a quarter of 
a century afterwards. No. 96 was a colour-shop, 
which, in Cunningham's ** Handbook" of 1849 
and 1850, the attentive reader is invited to " ob- 
serve." Its tenant previous to 1828 was one 
Powell, whose mother for many years had made 
* ' a pipe of wine" from a vine nearly a hundred feet 
long which was attached to the establishment, 
and which must have been much more remark- 
able than the historical plant in Bolt Court, 

1 As a matter of fact, Lady Di did illustrate Dryden's 
" Fables " in 1797, with Bartolozzi for her engraver. 



The ''Grub Street'' of the Arts, 45 

from which, in 1784, Dr. Johnson gathered 
** three bunches of grapes." In Powell's time, 
No. 96 was a fine old building whose Queen 
Anne door-frame was deeply carved with foliage 
and flowers after the fashion of the doorways in 
Great Ormond Street ; and, like Thornhill's ' 
house, it had a painted staircase. This, which 
represented figures viewing a procession, had 
been executed about 1732 by a French deco- 
rator named Clermont for the notorious empiric, 
Dr. Misaubin, to whom, either ironically or in 
good faith. Fielding inscribed his version of 
Moli^re's *'Medecin malgrd lui," known as 
the *' Mock Doctor." John Misaubin was the 
son of a French pastor in Spitalfields, and, if 
we are to take Fielding seriously, a man of 
parts and hospitality. ** I'd send for Misaubin, 
and take his pill," says Bramston's **Man of 
Taste " ; and, no doubt, a good many *' men of 
taste" knocked at the Doctor's Queen Anne 
portal in the Lane. The learned and platitudi- 
nous Dr. Trusler, who was briefed by Mrs. 
Hogarth, afiirms that the ** meagre figure " in 
Plate V of the " Harlot's Progress" is ** Dr. 
Miiebank, a foreigner." If so, he cannot, as 
contended by other commentators, also be the 
bow-legged dwarf who is wiping his spectacles 
in the third picture of '* Marriage A-la-Mode*'^ 



46 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

But seeing that Misaubin died in 1734, it is 
quite possible that the scene of the Quack 
Doctor in Hogarth's masterpiece is laid at No. 
96 ; and as he had an Irish wife, it is also pos- 
sible that in the fierce virago with the hoop, 
** spread out " — as Hazlitt says — *' like a turkey- 
cock's feathers," he was thinking of the Misau- 
bin establishment.^ The doctor made a con- 
siderable fortune by his nostrums, a fortune 
which his grandson, after the manner of 
Hogarth's Rake, promptly squandered, ending 
his days in brief space, not in Bedlam, but in 
St. Martin's Workhouse. 

Close upon No. 96, and turning to the left, 
came Cecil Court, a somewhat different place 
from the reputable paved passage, flanked with 
tall ''mansions," which now leads from St. 
Martin's Lane to Charing Cross Road. It was 
in Cecil Court that Hogarth's mother, a ma- 

I Whether the furniture and accessories of M. de la 
Pilule's consulting-room were accurate studies from those 
of Misaubin, it is of course difficult to affirm. But as an in- 
stance of the care with which Hogarth wrought out the 
details of his picture-dramas, there is now in the National 
Gallery a carefully finished pencil and stump study by 
him of a skull, which, though reversed, closely resembles 
that which stands on the quack's table. Hogarth has 
added the marks on the cranium, and apparently by an 
afterthought, has exaggerated the posterior part. 



The ''Grub Street'' of the Arts. 47 

jestic old lady, lived and died, her death being 
thus chronicled by the " Gentleman's Maga- 
zine": *'[June] II [1735] Mrs. Hogarth, 
Mother of the celebrated Mr. Hogarth, of a 
Fright occasioned by the Fire." This con- 
flagration, which took place on the 9th, must 
have been an event for Cecil Court, and was 
alleged to have been lighted by a certain brandy- 
selling Mrs. Calloway, who having been served 
by her landlord with a notice to quit, determined 
in revenge to "warm all her rascally neigh- 
bours," a resolution which she carried out in a 
very effective and business-like manner. No 
fewer than fourteen houses were burned, and 
one belonging to John Huggins, Esq., late 
Warden of The Fleet, was ''greatly damaged." 
For **John Huggins', Esquire," co-criminal 
with the infamous Bambridge of an earlier 
paper,^ there is little need of pity ; but if it is to be 
inferred that his residence was in the Court itself, 
it seems clear that the houses must have been 
of a superior class. Another resident in later 
years was the father of Wilkie's engraver, Abra- 
ham Raimbach ; and in Cecil Court, as already 
stated in '* An English Engraver in Paris," ^ 
Raimbach himself was born. History has, 

1 See Posf, " A Paladin of Philanthropy." 

2 See " Miscellanies," First Series, p. 145. 



48 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

however, recorded no other notable dwellers in, 
Cecil Court, while concerning the next Court, 
St. Martin's, it is silent altogether.^ By this 
time (1901) the northwestern side of St. Mar- 
tin's Court has been pulled down, and those 
who seek to recognise in it the '' large hand' 
some Court" of Strype with the "good new- 
built Houses" and **open Square in the 
Midst" must be endowed with exceptional 
powers of mental reconstruction. North of 
St. Martin's Court there are but two sites 
which concern this paper. One, where the 
Westminster County Court now stands, is that 
of the tavern known as New or Young Slaugh- 
ter's ; the other, which must have been at the 
entrance to Cranbourn Street, was occupied by 
the more famous Old Slaughter's. In a house 
between these two lodged, from 1720 to 1725, 
that favourite of Addison and Steele, and laugh-' 
ing-stock of Pope and Gay, Ambrose Philips. 
*' Pastoral Philips," in spite of what Swift 

1 This latter statement is inexact, for, as we have as- 
certained since the present paper was first penned, it was 
at the Charing Cross Road end of St. Martin's Court (not 
Lane) that once stood the ham-and-beef shop to which 
Lamb's wandering thoughts reverted on Skiddaw. 
Thackeray also mentions it in his powerful story of the 
murderess Catherine Hayes {jFraser's Magazine ^ 1839-40). 



The " Gruh StreeV of the Arts. 49 

called his '* little flams on Miss Carteret/' has 
never ranked as a great poetical name, even 
among the easy eminences of the Georgian era ; 
and certainly to have enriched the language with 
the epithet " namby-pamby," is scarcely the 
crown which a self-respecting bard should 
claim of Melpomene. Yet it is difficult not 
to remember that it was to see Anne Oldfield 
as Andromache in Philips' '* borrowed play " 
of the *'Distrest Mother" that Sir Roger de 
Coverley went in state to Drury Lane Play- 
house — a fictitious fact of far greater moment 
than the unquestioned and unvarnished truth 
that John Kemble, long afterwards, acted its 
Orestes in a costume borrowed from the illus- 
trious Talma. And though the sham eclogue 
which Gay laughed away in the ** Shep- 
herd's Week," is to-day only a little more for- 
gotten than the '' Shepherd's Week " itself, the 
** Persian Tales" which honest Philips did into 
English from P^tis de La Croix were long 
among the popular stock of pedlars, and the 
delight, after M. Antoine Galland's "Arabian 
Nights," of generations of schoolboys. One 
cannot feel wholly ungrateful to the harmless 
verseman whose highest ambition went no 
higher — in his arch-tormentor's words — than : — 
*« To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele." 



50 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

But Ambrose Philips and his red stockings 
have broken the logical order of our progres- 
sion, an accident which may perhaps justify the 
farther divergence of referring to Old Slaugh- 
ter's coffee-house before speaking of its rival 
and successor, Young Slaughter's. Previous 
to 1842, when it was pulled down to make room 
for the prolongation of Cranbourn Street, Old 
Slaughter's stood close to the southern corner 
of Great Newport Street, and its number in the 
Lane was 75.^ From a sketch made by Mr. 
F. W. Fairholt in 1826, it must then have been 
a comfortable building with bow windows 
which looked down Long Acre. It dated as 
far back as 1692, when it was started by the 
Thomas Slaughter from whom it derived its name, 

* In Kelly's first street Directory for 1841, No. 75 is 
given as « Reid and Co., Old Slaughter's Coffee-house." 
In 1842, No. 75 has disappeared altogether. Five or six 
years later Thackeray revived its bygone memory in 
«* Vanity Fair." For it is from "the Old Slaughter's 
Coffee-house," on the loth April, 181 5, that George Os- 
borne sets out, in a blue coat with brass buttons, and a 
neat buff waistcoat, to marry Amelia Sedley ; and it is at 
the same caravanserai, ten years later, that John the 
waiter tells Major William Dobbin, sans rancune, how the 
late Captain Osborne had died in his debt. " He owes 
me three pound at this minute," says John of the Slaugh- 
ter's, and he wonders whether George's old father would 
ever pay the money. 



The ''Grub Street'' of the Arts, 51 

and who kept it for more than seven-and-forty 
years. Dryden was reported to have frequented 
it in early days, and Pope. But its regular 
customers were the artist-folk of the Lane and 
its vicinity. Hither from Leicester Fields would 
come Hogarth, bragging of the new-old theories 
in the "Analysis," and scoffing at the "grand 
contorno'' of the virtuosi; hither Hayman, and 
the gold-chaser Moser, and Isaac Ware, the 
chimney-sweep-turned-architect who translated 
" Palladio " ; and (from his studio over the way) 
Roubillac, raving in broken English of the beau- 
ties of the Chevalier Bernini. Here, again, would 
be seen the shrewd Swiss enameller Rouquet, tak- 
ing notes of the state of the Arts in England for the 
benefit of Marshal Belle-Isle ; and Gravelot, 
who held that no Englishman could draw ; and 
" Friar" John Pine of the incised " Horace," 
who had a print-shop at No. 88. Luke Sulli- 
van, the engraver of the *' March to Finchley," 
McArdell the mezzo-tinter, and Richard Wil- 
son from Covent Garden were also well-known 
visitors ; while in later days, when evening 
drew on, and the last rays of light faded from 
the unfinished canvas, the tall ungainly figure 
of David Wilkie would slip in quietly to a re- 
mote table and a hurried meal, at which modest 
repast he would sometimes be joined by a 



52 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

noisier and more demonstrative companion, the 
Benjamin Robert Haydon, whose ambitious 
" Curtius leaping into the Gulf" now adorns a 
London Restaurant.^ Nor was there wanting a 
sprinkling of authors to carry on the traditions 
of Pope and Dryden, for Collins of the 
*'Odes" is reported to have used this time- 
honoured hostelry, and Goldsmith refers to its 
Orators in the "Essays" as if his knowledge 
was experimental. Here, too (as everywhere), 
was to be found Johnson, studying spoken 
French from the mouths of the French fre- 
quenters of the place, and (as always) express- 
ing his opinions in forcible language. The 
** fasting Monsieurs " — so he styles them in his 
** London" — disgusted him with their hare- 
brained and irresponsible frivolity. '* For any- 
thing I see," he declared, confirming the pre- 
vious verdict of a friend, " foreigners are 
Fools 1 " 

As already stated, Old Slaughter's came to an 
end in 1842, being then one hundred and fifty 
years old. It had attained the mature age of 
sixty-seven summers before its rival at No. 82, 
New or Young Slaughter's, came into existence 
— an existence brief in comparison and relatively 
undistinguished. Young Slaughter's legend 
* Messrs. Gatti's in Villiers Street, Strand. 



The '* Grub StreeV of the Arts. 53 

seems limited to the fact that, circa 1765, 
Smeaton, Solander, Banks, John Hunter, Cap- 
tain Cook, and certain other scientific or literary 
men, used it for Club meetings. Upper St. 
Martin's Lane, as the part north of Long Acre 
is called, is barren of memories — at all events in 
the eighteenth century. But over-against Old 
Slaughter's on the east side was No. 70, where, 
in 1775 Nathaniel Hone, among other 
specimen's of his skill, exhibited that irreverent 
picture of Sir Joshua as " The Pictorial Con- 
juror displaying the whole Art of Optical Decep- 
tion," a composition, which in its first form, had 
the supplementary discredit of insulting Angelica 
Kauffman. Below No. 70, at No. 65, was the 
entrance to the studio in which Roubillac took 
refuge after he had quitted Peter's Court, and 
from which, in 1762, he was buried in St. 
Martin's churchyard, his successor being his 
pupil, Nicholas Read, proficient in " pancake 
clouds," whose chief claim to remembrance lies 
in the tradition that he worked upon the shrouded 
figure of Death in Roubillac's monument to Mr. 
Nightingale and his wife in Westminster Abbey. 
After these the east side becomes uninteresting, 
except for the residence at No. 60 of Thomas 
Chippendale, *' Upholder," whose name is prob- 
ably better known now than in his own day, 



54 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

though we still seem to be ignorant of the dates 
of his birth and death. It was from his St. 
Martin's Lane shop, in 1754, that he put forth 
his ' ^Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director," 
a sumptuous series of one hundred and sixty 
copper-plates dedicated to the Earl of Northum- 
berland, and even now not entirely eclipsed by 
the severer designs of Thomas Sheraton. Some 
of the courts and side streets may detain us for 
a moment. In New Street was the " Golden 
Head," from which in 1770, young Flaxman 
sent a modest " Portrait of a Gentleman " as 
his first contribution to the Academy ; and it 
was at the *' Pine Apple " in the same street 
that Johnson, on coming to town, was wont to 
seek refreshment. " I dined (said he) very well 
for eightpence, with very good company. . . . 
Several of them had travelled. They expected 
to meet every day ; but did not know one an- 
other's names. It used to cost the rest a shill- 
ing, for they drank wine ; but I had a cut of 
meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and 
gave the waiter a penny ; so that I was quite 
well served, nay, better than the rest, for they 
gave the waiter nothing." In May's Buildings 
(where in later years the club called The Eccen- 
trics held its sittings) there flourished, accord- 
ing to Foote's " Taste," a manufactory of sham 



The ''Grub Street'' of the Arts^ 55 

Rembrandts and Ostades which deceived the 
opulent amateur and filled the pockets of the 
Puffs and Carmines of the day. Probably it 
was the east side of the old thoroughfare which 
most merited the title we have borrowed from 
Allan Cunningham to head these desultory 
memoranda. If they are here brought to a close, 
it is by no means because the subject is ex- 
hausted, for opposite to the church, and not far 
from the turnpike referred to at the beginning of 
this paper, stood the Watch or Round-House, 
an institution which should assuredly be fruitful 
of anecdote. But even in topography one must 
draw the line somewhere, and we draw it at this 
popular resort of the Georgian nobility and 
gentry. ** Le secret cTennu/er est celui de tout 
direr 



A PALADIN OF PHILANTHROPY. 

TN February, 1785, when the books of the 
-■■ " late learned SamuelJohnson, Esq. ; LL.D. 
Deceased/' were being sold by Mr. Christie at 
his Great Room in Pall Mall, one of the per- 
sons present was the poet, Samuel Rogers, then 
a youth of two-and-twenty. He recalls his 
attendance at this particular sale in order to 
chronicle the fact that he there met a very old 
gentleman, — so old that the flesh of his face 
looked like parchment, — who entertained the 
younger generation of Mr. Christie's clients by 
discoursing of the changes that had taken place 
in London within a memory which, to his 
auditors, seemed to rival that of the Count de 
St. Germain. He himself who spoke, he as- 
serted, had *'shot snipes in Conduit-Street," 
when Conduit Street was an open mead ; and it 
may be added that he had a friend, Mr. Carew 
Hervey Mildmay, who had done likewise.^ 
Concerning his age, beyond these indications, 

1 Mr. Mildmay died in 1780, being then ninety-six. 
Fifty years ago people were wont to boast of shooting 
snipe — it is always snipe ! — on the marshy site of Belgravia 
(the Five Fields) ; now they speak of Battersea and Bed- 
ford Park. 

56 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 57 

he was reticent ; and he was popularly sup- 
posed to be what he appeared to be — at least a 
hundred. Oddly enough, the only well-known 
portrait of him was taken by Samuel Ireland at 
just this time and place. It exhibits a very 
ancient personage indeed, lean as a grasshopper, 
with a profile not unlike that of Fielding in 
Hogarth's posthumous sketch. He wears a 
military-looking hat, and a caped coat with deep 
cuffs and ruffles. His sword-hilt projects be- 
tween his skirts ; and in his right hand, which 
is propped upon a stout walking-cane, he holds 
a book which has been knocked down to him, 
and which he is reading attentively without the 
aid of spectacles. 

The cadet of a Jacobite family in the West 
Riding of Yorkshire, with an English father and 
an Irish mother. General James Edward Ogle- 
thorpe — for such was the name of Ireland's 
sitter — was not so old as he looked, and perhaps 
wished to be thought. When in July, 178^, he 
died, contemporary prints vaguely stated his age 
at one hundred and two,^ and his epitaph in Cran- 

1 " One Hundred Two ! Mathusalem in age, 
A vigorous soldier, and a virtuous sage : 
He founded Georgia, gave it laws and trade ; 
He saw it flourish, and he saw it fade ! " 

Gentleman^ s Magazine ^ Iv. 573. 



5 8 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

ham Church — an incontinent production by 
Capel Lofft which rivals the performances of 
Pope's Dr. Freind — is silent as to the date of 
his birth. His fullest biographer, Mr. Wright, 
and his latest biographer, Mr. Bruce, concur in 
fixing this as June i, 1689. But shortly after 
Mr. Wright's book appeared in 1867, an in- 
defatigable amateur of the parish register, the 
late Col. J. L. Chester, pointed out in *' Notes 
and Queries " that the date of the General's 
birth was plainly recorded at St. Martin's-in-the- 
Fields, being there given as December 22, 
1696 — a date which (as regards day and month) 
is practically confirmed by the fact that, in the 
colony of Georgia, which he founded, the 21st 
December was long kept as his birthday. The 
seven years thus deducted from his lifetime 
make legend of many of the facts related of his 
youth. Even if he were really, as his epitaph 
avers, a ** Captain- Lieutenant " of the Queen's 
Guards in 17 14 (at eighteen), it is very im- 
probable that he could have been the " Ad- 
jutant-General Oglethorpe " who, in the same 
year, travelled from Lyons to Turin with Dr. 
Berkeley. But it is pretty clear that in 17 14 he 
matriculated at Corpus, where he was a Gentle- 
man Commoner. In 171 5, either upon the 
recommendation of Marlborough or Argyll, he 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 59 

took service under Prince Eugene, and assisted 
at the siege of Belgrade by the Austrians. For 
this we have his own authority. *< Pray, Gen- 
eral," said Johnson to him in 1772, ** give us an 
account of the siege of Belgrade " (Boswell, by 
a slip of the pen, says Bender). Whereupon 
the old warrior, across the walnuts, and with 
the aid of some of the wine, described that 
military exploit. Hac ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia 
tellus. ** Here we were, here were the Turks," 
etc., etc., to all of which the Doctor '* listened 
with the closest attention." It is from Boswell 
again, and indeed upon the same occasion, that 
we get the only other authentic anecdote of 
Oglethorpe's youth. A propos of duelling, 
Boswell tells the following story, as the General 
told it. Sitting once at table, under Eugene, 
with a certain Prince of Wurtemberg, the latter, 
by fiUipping the surface of his wine, made some 
of it fly over the young volunteer, who was thus 
placed in the awkward dilemma of having to 
choose between accepting or resenting a gratui- 
tous affront. Oglethorpe's resolution was quickly 
taken. Saying with a smile, "That's a good 
joke, but we do it much better in England I " 
he raised his glass, and flung the contents in His 
Serenity's face. Whereupon an old General 
present pacifically observed, **7/ a bienfait, mon 



6o MiscellanieSy Second Series, 

Princej vous Vave\ commend,'" and the affair 
passed off in good humour. 

With the peace of Passarowitz in 171 8, hos- 
tilities between the Sultan and Charles VI were 
brought to a close, and with those hostilities 
ended Oglethorpe's experiences as a Continental 
volunteer. A year or two later, by the death 
of his second brother. Sir Theophilus Ogle- 
thorpe, he succeeded to the family estate of 
Westbrook, near Godalming, which included a 
mansion where the Pretender was reported to 
have lain in hiding; and in October, 1722, like 
his father and brother before him, he took his 
seat in Parliament for Haslemere. As a sena- 
tor, he was conspicuous for a frank speech and 
a benevolent motive. Colonisation, commerce, 
free trade, and the silk manufacture in England 
were things which interested him ; and he had a 
knack of homely illustration which was by no 
means ineffective in debate. But he was a 
working rather than a talking politician, and his 
most valuable Parliamentary efforts were in con- 
nection with the Committee of 1729-30 into the 
state of the debtors' prisons in London — a 
Committee which, indeed, had originated with 
himself. A friend of his own, one Robert 
Castell, an amiable amateur architect, who, un- 
der guise of an introduction to Vitruvius, had 



A Paladin of Philanthropy, 6i 

prepared, and dedicated to Richard, Earl of 
Burlington, a stately subscription folio on the 
Villas of the Ancients, subsequently — and per- 
haps consequently — fell into grave pecuniary 
difficulties. He was thrown into the Fleet, at 
that time farmed by a wretch named Thomas 
Bambridge, who, in his capacity of Warden, 
cleared some five thousand pounds a year by 
fleecing and oppressing the unfortunate debtors 
under his charge. As long as Castell could 
contrive to pay heavily for the privilege of re- 
siding in one of the four or five shabby streets 
which then constituted the Rules or Liberties, 
he was permitted to do so. But when he be- 
came unable to satisfy the Warden's immoder- 
ate demands for '* presents" (as they were 
called), he was mercilessly transferred to one of 
the three spunging houses^ attached to the 
prison, a crowded and loathsome den in which, 
moreover, the smallpox was then raging. He 
had never (as he protested) had that distemper ; 
was extremely apprehensive of it ; caught it al- 
most immediately ; and died in a few days, de- 

1 Johnson (whose knowledge was experimental) accu- 
rately defined these establishments in the " Dictionary " as 
houses «< to which debtors are taken before commitment to 
prison, where tAe bailiffs sponge upon thenty and riot at 
their cost." 



62 MiscellanieSj Second Series. 

daring, with his last breath, that he had been 
murdered by Bambridge. Oglethorpe promptly 
brought his friend's deplorable fate to the notice 
of the House of Commons ; and a Select Com- 
mittee to inquire into the state of the Gaols of 
the Kingdom was forthwith appointed, of which 
he was nominated Chairman. Its three Reports 
on the Fleet and the King's Bench prisons, still 
to be read in volume eight of Cobbett's " Par- 
liamentary History," disclose the most sicken- 
ing story of barbarity, extortion, and insanita- 
tion. The good and the bad, the sick and the 
hale, were found to be herded together in filthy 
dungeons ; deaths, often from sheer starvation, 
were of daily occurrence ; iron collars, thumb- 
screws, and the heaviest fetters were freely used 
for the refractory ; and an unfortunate prisoner 
might be subjected to all this for the paltry debt 
of a shilling, which became the nucleus of end- 
less gratuities and "considerations," and the 
pretext for perpetual confinement. As a result 
of the labours of Oglethorpe's committee some 
of the more crying of these abuses were reme- 
died ; but many yet remained, thirty years later, 
to arouse the pious horror of John Howard. 
The "garnish" money of the "Beggar's 
Opera" and the " begging box " of the " Citi- 
zen of the World " still swelled the profits of 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 63 

the Deputy- Marshal and his myrmidons; the 
terrible gaol-fever continued to claim its tribute 
of victims ; and the prison interiors of Gold- 
smith's " Vicar " and Fielding's " Amelia " can 
scarcely be regarded as evidences of an attained 
ideal. One of the most interesting mementoes 
of Oglethorpe's endeavours — which, by the way, 
were not restricted to his Parliamentary labours 
— is Hogarth's picture, now in the National Por- 
trait Gallery, of Bambridge under examination. 
It was painted for Sir Archibald Grant of 
Monymusk, Knight of the Shire for Aberdeen, 
and a member of the Committee. ^ Horace 
Walpole, who had the original oil-sketch, is 
loud in appreciation of the rendering of the 
inhuman gaoler. ** It is the very figure that 
Salvator Rosa would have drawn for lago in 
the moment of detection. Villainy, fear, and 
conscience are mixed in yellow and livid on his 
countenance, his lips are contracted by tremor, 
his face advances as eager to lie, his legs step 
back as thinking to make his escape ; one hand 
is thrust precipitately into his bosom, the fingers 
of the other are catching uncertainly at his but- 
ton-holes. If this was a portrait [and it was] , 

iSir James ThornMll, the painter, who probably got 
Hogarth the commission, was also on the Committee. 



64 Miscellanies y Second Series, 

it is the most speaking that ever was drawn ; if 
it was not, it is still finer." ^ 

The Committee of Enquiry into the state of 
the Gaols was not Oglethorpe's first philan- 
thropic essay. In 1728 he had published 
anonymously a little pamphlet entitled "The 
Sailor's Advocate," in which he exposed the 
abuses of the cruel method of impressment 
countenanced by the Admiralty of his day, and, 
indeed, of many a day to follow. But the in- 
sight he had gained into the horrors of prison 
discipline had now turned his thoughts defi- 
nitely in fresh directions ; and he began to cast 
about to find employment and a future for those 
hapless beings who, from no unpardonable fault 
of their own, were most liable to fall into the 
clutches of Bambridge and his kind. After 
prolonged and anxious consideration, he was 
led to believe that the true solution of the ques- 
tion must be sought in assisted emigration — a 
conclusion in which he was fortified (he says) 
by the successful settlement of Derry (under 
James I) by the Corporation of London. 
The district he selected for his field of operation 
was one which had already attracted the pro- 
jector. It lay on the east coast of North 

iThis sketch is now (1901) in the possession of Mr, 
Fairfax Murray. 



A Paladin of Philanthropy, 65 

America, beyond and below the Savannah River, 
and to the north of the Spanish territory of Flor- 
ida. The Spaniards, who claimed all America, 
threatened it periodically from the south ; bands 
of desperate runaway blacks infested it from the 
Carolinas; and to the west were dense and 
trackless woods, filled with Cherokees, Chicka- 
saws, and other hostile and predatory Indian 
tribes. But Oglethorpe, nothing daunted, put 
forward his scheme. With twenty other trus- 
tees, he petitioned the Throne for an Act of 
Incorporation, and in June, 1732, obtained a 
charter for settling and establishing a new 
colony, to be called Georgia, in honour of 
George II. In a couple of pamphlets, pub- 
lished in the same year, and entitled respectively 
** An Essay on Plantations," and " A New and 
Accurate Account of the Provinces of South 
Carolina and Georgia," he developed his ideas, 
which he affirmed to be ** the result of various 
readings and conversations in many years." 
His appeal was warmly responded to by the 
public, and Parliament handed over to the 
trustees a sum of ;^i 0,000, the residue of a grant 
voted but not paid to Berkeley for his frustrate 
college in the Bermudas. The trustees, who 
were themselves large contributors to the 
scheme, were, by their Charter, restrained from 



66 Miscellanies y Second Series, 

receiving any salary, fee, perquisite or profit 
whatsoever, nor could they hold any land ; con- 
ditions entirely honourable to themselves, and 
not subsequently discredited. Slavery, which 
prevailed in the Carolinas, was also strictly pro- 
hibited, eventually by special Statute. After 
careful inquiries, thirty-five families, comprising 
representatives of many trades, and numbering 
in all one hundred and twenty persons, were 
chosen for the first settlers ; and on the i6th of 
November, 1732, they set sail from Gravesend 
in the ** Anne " (Captain Thomas). They were 
accompanied by Oglethorpe himself ; by a chap- 
lain, the Rev. Henry Herbert, and by a Pied- 
montese named Amatis, whose function it was 
to instruct the new colonists in the art of rear- 
ing silkworms and winding silk. Oglethorpe 
who was empowered to act as a Colonial Gov- 
ernor, was at this date six-and-thirty, and not- 
withstanding an undeniable touch of romance 
in his character, still unmarried. He had 
already shown energy and tenacity of purpose ; 
he was now to exhibit, in fuller measure, his 
gifts as an organiser and administrator. He is 
described as tall, manly, and very handsome ; 
as dignified, but not austere ; and if it be added 
to these things that, as a country gentleman, he 
had an ample fortune, which he freely employed 



A Paladin of Philanihropy. 67 

in the furtherance of his charitable designs, may 
fairly claim to be written, like Abou Ben Adhem, 
^* as one that loved his fellow-men." 

On January 13, 1733, ^^^^^ a prosperous voy- 
age of some sixty days, the "Anne" dropped 
anchor outside Charleston Bar in South Caro- 
lina, and Oglethorpe proceeded to select the 
site of the new settlement. The spot he fixed 
upon was a flat bluff or headland on the right 
(or south) bank of the Savannah, where, about 
ten miles from the mouth, it bends eastward to 
the Atlantic. This site extended from five to 
six miles into the country, with a river frontage 
of a mile. Forthwith the clearing of the ground 
began, and streets and squares were marked 
out. By the middle of March five houses were 
built or building, and a crane and magazines had 
been erected. The settlers had been solemnly 
warned against the dangers of drunkenness; 
and friendly relations were already in progress 
with the nearest body of Indians, a branch of 
the Creek tribe, barely half a mile off, at 
Yamacraw. Oglethorpe's management of the 
Indians deserves the highest praise, and he 
speedily inspired them with a confidence which 
they never lost. They are " desirous," he 
wrote to the trustees, "to be subjects to his 
Majesty, King George, to have lands given 



68 Miscellaniesj Second Series. 

them among us, and to breed their children at 
our schools. Their chief, and his beloved man, 
who is the second man in the nation, desire to 
be instructed in the Christian religion.*' A 
month or two later a formal convention was 
concluded with the Indians, under which the 
country between the Savannah and the Altamaha 
(Goldsmith's " wild Altama " in *' The Deserted 
Village "), as far as the tide waters flowed, and 
including most of the islands, was ceded to 
the trustees ; and, by a subsequent treaty, the 
Creeks engaged to have no dealings with the 
Spaniards or the French. As a protection 
against the former, Oglethorpe erected a strong 
outpost on the Ogechee river, which he chris- 
tened (in honour of his patron) Fort Argyll ; 
and this was followed, not long after, by the 
creation, on St. Simon's Island, at the mouth 
of the Altamaha, of the settlement and military 
station of Frederica. Meanwhile new emi- 
grants continued to reach Savannah. A large 
body of these were Protestants, from Salzburg, 
whose expulsion from their native land, by 
episcopal edict, had excited considerable sym- 
pathy in England.^ Oglethorpe and his trustees 
invited them to Georgia, where, in March, 

1 The Exodus of the Salzburgers has been made the 
subject of a picture by the German artist, Adolph Menzel. 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 69 

1734, they arrived, to be welcomed warmly by 
the English colonists, and regaled, inter alia^ 
with ** very fine, wholesome English beer."^ 
They took up their abode in a locality chosen 
for them by Oglethorpe's aid, which they 
named ** Ebenezer." As soon as they were 
established there, Oglethorpe, leaving his new 
colony in the charge of a bailiff or storekeeper, 
named Causton, set sail for England in H. M. S. 
** Aldborough," taking with him his now firm 
friend, the old Creek chief or Mico, Tomo- 
Chichi, his wife, Senauki, his boy-nephew and 
successor, Tooanahowi, and Hillispilli, his 
war-captain.'' Oglethorpe's politic object in 
choosing these traveling companions was to 
impress his Indian allies with the resources of 
Great Britain, and the importance of her insti- 
tutions. 

Tomo-Chichi and his suite had certainly a 
flattering reception in London. The war-cap- 

1 This very minor detail is mentioned for the sake of 
showing that Oglethorpe's objection to alcohol stopped at 
" fire-water." He would have been thoroughly in sym- 
pathy with the respective lessons of Hogarth's " Beer 
Street " and « Gin Lane." 

2 Tomo-Chichi in his furs, and Tooanahowi holding a 
live eagle, were painted in London by William Verelst. 
It was a different Verelst who, in 17 lo, had painted the 
Four Iroquois Indian Kings of the Spectator. 



70 MiscellanieSf Second Series. 

tain having been with difficulty restrained from 
appearing in his " native nothingness" of paint 
and feathers, the party were taken to Kensing- 
ton in three coaches to interview George II, 
who received them very graciously, and allowed 
them ;^20 a week during their four months' 
stay in town. They subsequently visited the 
venerable Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Wil- 
liam Wake) at Lambeth, and were made ac- 
quainted with whatever was ** curious and worthy 
Observation in and about the Cities of London 
and Westminster.'" They received some ;;^400 
worth of presents, including a gold watch which 
was presented to Tooanahowi, with a pious ad- 
monition, by the youthful Duke of Cumberland. 
In return, they seem to have greatly (or grate- 
fully) admired His Royal Highness's " Exercise 
of riding the manag'd Horse," and to have been 
specially impressed by the magnificence of the 
Life Guards and the glories of the Thames on 
Lord Mayor's Day. After their return to 
Georgia in October, some of the tribe sent an 
elaborate letter of thanks to Tomo-Chichi's 
English entertainers, but scarcely in a shape 
adapted for preservation in an autograph book. 
It consisted of the dressed skin of a young buf- 
falo, painted by a Cherokee chief with red and 
black hieroglyphics; and in this form it long or- 



A Paladin of Philanthropy, 71 

namented the Qeorgia OflBce in Old Palace 
Yard. Oglethorpe himself was also naturally 
the object of much attention, and he received 
many testimonies to the popularity of his enter- 
prise. Some of these took peculiar forms. At 
the end of 1735 a certain eccentric Mr. Robert 
North, of Scarborough, offered prizes to the 
*' Gentleman's Magazine" for the four best 
poems entitled *'The Christian Hero" (the 
name, it will be remembered, of an early devo- 
tional manual by Captain Richard Steele of the 
Guards). The first prize was to be a gold 
medal with Oglethorpe's head on one side, and 
that of Lady Elizabeth Hastings (Steele's 
*'Aspasia") on the other. Lady Elizabeth's 
effigy was, however, withheld at her own re- 
quest, and that of Oglethorpe did not prove 
complimentary as a portrait. As for the poems 
— well, the poems may still be read in Sylvanus 
Urban his sixth volume. But the metrical ut- 
terance that really handed down Oglethorpe's 
name to posterity made its appearance a year 
later (1737). The couplet — 

" One, driv'n by strong Benevolence of Soul, 
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe from Pole to Pole—" 

in Alexander Pope's epistle to Colonel Cot- 
terell, has done more to preserve the memory of 



72 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

the founder of Georgia than all the records of 
the Office at Westminster. 

During Oglethorpe's stay in England he had 
been actively promoting the interests of the new 
province, but beyond the fact that, from his seat 
in the House, he had warmly supported two Acts 
prohibiting the introduction into the settlement 
of spirits and slavery, his doings have not been 
particularly recorded. In December, 1735, he 
set out on his return voyage with two vessels, 
the "Symond" and the " London Merchant," 
having on board two hundred and twenty chosen 
settlers, and a fresh consignment of Salzburgers. 
He was accompanied, as missionaries, by John 
"Wesley, at this time two-and-thirty, and his 
younger brother Charles, who was twenty-six. 
After a passage of many vexations and delays 
(like Fielding later, they were detained several 
weeks at the Isle of Wight by contrary winds), 
they reached their destination. Of course there 
were disappointments. Tybee Island, at the 
river-mouth, which should have been lighted, 
was still dark. But Savannah itself had greatly 
prospered in its founder's absence. Where, 
three years before, there had been only the 
** matted woods " of Goldsmith, now rose some 
two hundred comfortable dwellings with garden- 
and orchard-plots, and pasture lands filled with 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 73 

grazing cattle. There were even public recre- 
ation grounds, delightfully situated by the river- 
side, where flourished orange trees and tulip- 
laurels, and white mulberries for the silkworms, 
and tropical plants — coffee and cotton and 
palma Christi — which had been sent from the 
West Indies by Sir Hans Sloane. Savannah, 
however, was no longer to be Oglethorpe's chief 
care. The Spaniards, who had a stronghold at 
St. Augustine, in Florida, had begun to demon- 
strate uneasily along the Altamaha, and he 
turned his energies for the future mainly to the 
protection of the Southern frontier. A body of 
Gaelic Highlanders from Inverness were already 
installed at Darien, about twelve miles up the 
Altamaha ; and after adjusting some difficulties 
of the Salzburgers, who were dissatisfied with the 
site of Ebenezer, he hastened southward to St. 
Simon's Island at the river mouth. Here in 
brief space he established, and stocked with 
emigrants, the fort of Frederica, for many years 
to come the main bulwark against Spanish ag- 
gression in North America ; and it is with this 
fort on St. Simon's Island that, during the re- 
mainder of his stay in Georgia, he was chiefly 
connected. 

It has already been mentioned that Oglethorpe 
was accompanied on his return from England by 



74 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

the Wesley brothers. Their subsequent history 
is one of the difficult passages of the Georgia 
chronicle. Charles, the younger, who, besides 
being chaplain, was to be Oglethorpe's secretary, 
appears to have speedily wearied of his lay duties, 
added to which, during Oglethorpe's absence 
from Frederica, he became involved in a tangle of 
misunderstandings with the settlers — misunder- 
standings embittered by jealousies and compli- 
cated by feminine tittle-tattle. In a very few 
weeks he found Frederica too hot for him ("I 
was overjoyed at my deliverance out of this 
furnace"), and not long afterwards resigned his 
post, parting kindly with Oglethorpe, who, in 
spite of his impetuosity, never bore malice. 
Meanwhile his elder brother, whom Oglethorpe 
liked less, was not prospering at Savannah. He 
had come out to convert the Indians, but he 
never learned their language. On the other 
hand, he seems to have contrived to make him- 
self exceedingly distasteful to the colonists. At 
this stage of his career — as he himself admitted 
later — he was a bigoted High Churchman. 
His exhortations, rigorous in doctrine and per- 
sonal in tone, were angrily resented by the very 
mixed community of the new settlement. He 
is, moreover, alleged to have "interfered in 
family quarrels and the broils of social life." 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 75 

Finally came the affaire du coeur which has been 
so frequently related. Always susceptible to 
feminine charm, he became attached to the 
storekeeper's niece, a designing coquette, who 
had nursed him through a fever, and deliberately 
laid herself out to attract him. Whether he 
actually made known his sentiments is obscure, 
but the Salzburg elders were certainly consulted 
privately as to the expediency of his marrying. 
They reported unfavourably, and the lady 
promptly consoled herself with a rival admirer. 
When afterwards, for some levity of behaviour 
as a married woman, Wesley declined to admit 
her to the Communion Table, her uncle and 
husband indicted him for defamation. The suit 
failed, but Savannah thenceforth became impos- 
sible for John Wesley, and he returned to Eng- 
land in December, 1737, as Whitefield was 
setting out to join him. Whitefield, in other 
ways, was equally ineffectual ; and he, also, 
made no long stay in Georgia. In no case does 
there seem to have been any actual rupture 
with Oglethorpe. But from a letter he wrote 
later, ci propos of the excellent " Practice of 
Christianity" which the good Manx Bishop, 
Dr. Wilson, had drawn up at his request, " to- 
wards an Instruction for the Indians," he was 
manifestly of opinion that the teaching of " our 



76 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

Methodists" (by which he must be understood 
to mean the brothers and their successor) had 
not proved to be adapted to the spiritual re- 
quirements of the colony. Probably he would 
personally have preferred more loving-kindness 
and a little less formality. 

The Wesleys, however, are but an episode in 
Georgian history ; and during their residence 
in the settlement can scarcely have had any pro- 
longed intercourse with Oglethorpe, whose life 
henceforward reads like a realisation of the old 
stage direction, ''excursions and alarms.'* 
Actually or indirectly he was continuously 
occupied in watching or checkmating the aggres- 
sive movements of the Spaniards; and his re- 
sources, offensive and defensive, were uncertain 
and inadequate. The Indians, his best friends, 
were excitable, and not always to be controlled 
by civilisation; the Carolinians, besides being 
committed to slave-labour, were self-seeking 
and obstructive ; while the Salzburgers, though 
inoffensive enough in their "petrified Sabbath" 
at Ebenezer, declined to fight, even for hearth and 
home, and ultimately had to " fold their tents" 
altogether. After nine months of defending 
Georgia against its different dangers, Oglethorpe 
took advantage of a temporary lull to sail again 
for England, and beat up recruits. He was re- 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. jj 

ceived with renewed enthusiasm, not a little 
heightened by the fact that the Court of 
Madrid, while privately strengthening St. 
Augustine, had the audacity to demand that 
neither Oglethorpe nor his levies should be 
allowed to go back. Nevertheless, with the 
approval of Government, his regiment of 600 
men was raised ; and in the following September 
(1738), he once more reached St. Simon's with 
the title of commander-in-chief of all his 
Majesty's forces in Georgia and South Carolina. 
Some further time was occupied in procuring 
and concluding fresh treaties with the Indians ; 
and then came the long deferred Declaration 
of War with Spain, one of the first results of 
which was that Oglethorpe was ordered to 
reduce St. Augustine. This, a few months 
later, he prepared to do, but not with his usual 
good fortune. He had a fair equipment of 
regulars, Carolina militia, and Indians, and this 
land force, numbering some two thousand men, 
was intended to be supported from the sea by 
English men-of-war. But the Indians proved 
unmanageable ; the colonial militia, besides 
being inefficient, deserted freely ; and the fleet 
failed to render the aid expected. Sickness 
and disaffection complicated matters, and after 
investing St. Augustine (which was found to be 



yS Miscellanies, Second Series. 

strongly garrisoned and well defended) for five 
weeks, Oglethorpe had no option but to with- 
draw ingloriously, to the great prejudice of his 
prestige both abroad and at home, where his 
old patron, the Duke of Argyll, had to explain 
in the House of Lords (what was indeed the 
truth) that the enterprise had miscarried " only 
for want of supplies necessary to a possibility 
of success." 

Fortunately, for nearly two years after the 
siege of St. Augustine, Spain remained compara- 
tively quiet. Then, in the spring of 1742, came 
Oglethorpe's opportunity. Before he had been 
the attacker, now he was to be the attacked, 
and the story, on a smaller scale, has a dash of 
the Elizabethan days. With Castilian delibera- 
tion the Spaniards of Florida and the Havana 
fitted out a pompous armada of forty or fifty 
ships, snows, galleys, and periaguas, the purpose 
of which was to sweep the heretics, summarily 
and forever, from the North American settle- 
ments. The key of Georgia was St. Simon's 
Island, and St. Simon's Island, the defences of 
which had been recently strengthened, could not 
be neglected by an invader. Into St. Simon's 
Island Oglethorpe accordingly threw himself 
with a rapidly organised band of followers. 
When, after an unsuccessful attack on Fort 



A Paladin of Philanthropy, 79 

William (in Cumberland Island), the Spaniards 
arrived in St. Simon's Sound, he allowed them 
to land, spiked the guns of a smaller fort to the 
south, and retired upon Frederica, which was 
flanked by a dense oak forest, and approached 
by a morass. Here, under cover of the wood, 
and excellently served by his Indian scouts, he 
attacked the enemy in detail, a course which 
subjected them to much the same fate as that 
which befell Braddock's ill-starred expedition, 
fourteen years later, against Fort Duquesne. 
Notwithstanding their superiority, numbers of 
them, including several officers of distinction, 
were killed by sallies and ambuscades, and 
Oglethorpe himself, as a leader, seems to have 
shown not only extraordinary resource and 
decision, but also marked personal gallantry, 
taking two Spaniards prisoner, on one occasion, 
with his own hand. Finally, by a fortunate 
stratagem, he contrived, through the medium of 
a French spy, to persuade his foes that an 
English fleet was on its way to his relief — a 
statement which was opportunely supported by 
the chance appearance of some vessels off the 
coast. After about a week of this desultory and 
disastrous warfare, the discomfited Spanish forces 
re-embarked, with Oglethorpe at their heels. 
They made a renewed but fruitless attack upon 



8o MiscellanieSy Second Series. 

Fort William, which was bravely defended by 
Ensign Stuart. In a few days more they had 
faded away in the direction of St. Augustine, 
and Oglethorpe was able to order a thanksgiving 
for the end of the invasion. Seven or eight 
hundred men had put to flight more than five 
thousand ; and Whitefield might well write (as 
he did) that *' the deliverance of Georgia from 
the Spaniards is such as cannot be paralleled but 
by some instances out of the Old Testament." 

During the remainder of his stay in Georgia, 
Oglethorpe continued to " harass the Spaniard" 
by all the means at his command. But he was 
ill-supported from home both with money and 
men ; and what was worse, his military opera- 
tions had involved him personally in financial 
difficulties which sooner or later must have 
necessitated his return to England. The proxi- 
mate cause of that return, however, was 
apparently to meet certain charges which had 
been preferred against him by one of his sub- 
ordinates, Lieut. -Colonel Cook. In June, 1 744, 
these were declared by a Board of General Offi- 
cers to be " false, malicious, and without founda- 
tion," and Cook was summarily dismissed the 
service. A month or two later (September 1 5) the 
^'Gentleman's Magazine" records the marriage 
of " Gen. Oglethorpe y — to the only Daughter of 



A Paladin of Philanlhropf, 8i 

the late Sir Nathan Wright, Bt., of Cranham 
Hall, Essex.'' The lady, who was thirty-five, 
brought him a fresh fortune (Georgia must by 
this time have absorbed his own), and a pleasant 
Jacobean country-house with an old-fashioned 
garden. One of Mr. Urban's poets seems to 
have expected that Mrs. Oglethorpe would 
henceforth share her husband's " fatigues, and 
conduct in the field." But Oglethorpe never 
again went back to Georgia, which was thence- 
forth left to go its own gait, and adopt slave 
labour. In the Forty-Five, he was appointed to 
a command under that corpulent rival of Eugene 
and Marlborough, *' Billy the Butcher," who 
subsequently accused him of "lingering on the 
road " with his rangers in pursuit of the rebels. 
*' Lingering" was not a fault of Oglethorpe, who 
was promptly acquitted by court-martial — the 
King confirming the verdict. But though he 
was later made a Lieutenant-General, this 
incident, coupled with some distrust of his 
Jacobite antecedents, practically closed his 
career as a soldier. For several years he con- 
tinued to speak ably and earnestly in the House 
of Commons on matters military and philan- 
thropic. Then, in 1754, two years after the 
trustees had finally washed their hands of 
Georgia, he lost the seat which he had held 



82 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

through seven Parliaments; and in 1765, two 
years after Florida was transferred to England 
at the Treaty of Paris, he became a full General, 
soon to be the oldest in the British army. But 
it was twenty years more before he finally quitted 
the scene, living past the American Revolution 
and the famous Declaration which made Georgia 
independent, to die at last in his Essex home, 
not as one might suppose, of old age, but of a 
violent fever which would have killed him at 
any time. He is buried in the little church at 
Cranham, where his widow was ultimately laid 
beside him. 

There are many references to Oglethorpe in 
the memoirs of his day, through which he flits 
fitfully for half a century, vigorous, bright-eyed, 
and too eager of speech to complete his sen- 
tences. He was familiar, of course, with Bos- 
well, to which eminent " Authour," after the 
publication of the "Tour in Corsica," he intro- 
duced himself in a particularly gratifying man- 
ner. *' My name. Sir, is Oglethorpe, and I 
wish to be acquainted with you." He bade 
him not marry till he had first put the Corsicans 
in a proper situation. " You may make a for- 
tune in the doing of it," said he ; ** or, if you 
do not, you will have acquired such a character 
as will entitle you to make a fortune " — words 



A Paladin of Philanthropy, 83 

which, if correctly reported, have a curious odd 
suggestion of his own experience. He was 
also known to Johnson, whose '' London" he 
had been one of the earliest to praise " in all 
companies," and there can be no doubt that 
such lines as those in that poem which speak of 
*' peaceful deserts, yet unclaimed by Spain," 
which might afford an asylum to the oppressed, 
must have found a responsive echo in Ogle- 
thorpe's heart. Both the Doctor and Boswell 
seem to have proposed to write their friend's 
life, but neither did ; and we are left to explain 
their neglect either by indolence, or that ab- 
sence of effective biographical material and pre- 
dominance of minor detail which have proved 
such a stumbling-block to Oglethorpe's biogra- 
phers. Another contemporary whom he knew 
was Goldsmith, to whom he offered Cranham 
as an asylum from the fumum strepitumque 
Romce. He sends him five pounds for a chari- 
table purpose, and adds — "if a farm and a 
mere country scene will be a little refreshment 
from the smoke of London, we shall be glad of 
the happiness of seeing you at Cranham Hall." 
Whether Goldsmith went (he was familiar with 
another Essex house. Lord Clare's atGosfield), 
is not related ; but it was when Oglethorpe was 
calling upon him with Topham Beauclerk that 



84 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

he was insulted by Pilkington's historical pound 
— no, quarter-of-a-pound — of tea ; and it was at 
Oglethorpe's, in April, 1773, that he sang Tony 
Lumpkin's *' Three Jolly Pigeons" and that 
other ditty, to the tune of the '* Humours of 
Balamagairy" ('^ Ah, me I when shall I marry 
mel"), which was left out of "She Stoops" 
because the "Miss Hardcastle " of the play 
was no vocalist. But the last, and perhaps the 
most picturesque accounts of Oglethorpe are 
given by Horace Walpole and Hannah More. 
** I have got a new admirer," writes that lively 
lady from Mrs. Garrick's in 1784. ** We flirt 
together prodigiously ; it is the famous General 
Oglethorpe, perhaps the most remarkable man 
of his time ... the finest figure you ever saw. 
He perfectly realises all my ideas of Nestor. 
His literature is great [he knew some of Miss 
More's poetry by heart], his knowledge of the 
world extensive, and his faculties as bright as 
ever ; he is one of the three persons still living 
who were mentioned by Pope ; Lord Mansfield 
and Lord Marchmont are the other two. . . . 
He is quite a preux chevalier, heroic, romantic, 
and full of the old gallantry." Walpole, who 
was feebler, and frailer, and crippled with rheu- 
matism, is hardly as enthusiastic as "St. Han- 
nah," which was his own pet-name for Miss 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 85 

More. But his report is fully confirmatory of 
Oglethorpe's young old age. *' General Ogle- 
thorpe, who sometimes visits me . . . has the 
activity of youth when compared with me. His 
eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory 
would suit a boy, if a boy could recollect a 
century backwards. His teeth are gone ; he is 
a shadow, and a wrinkled one ; but his spirits 
and his spirit are in full bloom ; two years and 
a half ago, he challenged a neighbouring gentle- 
man for trespassing on his manor. '/ could 
carry a cannon as easily as let off a pistol.'" 
And this was written in April, 1785, a month or 
two before Oglethorpe's death. 

Hannah More's conventional '^ preux cheva- 
lier " strikes the final note of Oglethorpe better 
than her lightly-penned laudation. When he 
recommends her to study the old romances be- 
cause it is the only way to acquire " noble sen- 
timents," we are reminded not a little of his 
own kinship to Don Quixote ; when we read 
of his restless and impulsive energy, we recall 
(and the parallel was drawn in his own day) the 
ubiquitous exploits of Swift's Peterborough : 

" Mordanto gallops on alone, 
The roads are with his followers strown, 
This breaks a girth and that a bone ; 



86 MiscellanieSy Second Series. 

" His body active as his mind, 
Returning sound in limb and wind, 
Except some leather left behind." 

He [prosecuted Philanthropy in the spirit of a 
Paladin, rejoicing in the obstacles, the en- 
counters, the nights sub Jove frigido ; and it is 
easy to imagine him declaiming to Johnson and 
Goldsmith of the dangers of luxury, or quoting 
the admirable precepts of Mr. Addison's 
*' Cato." His method, with all its advantages, 
had demonstrable drawbacks ; and it is quite 
possible that, reasoning with his heart rather 
than his head, he was occasionally mistaken 
both in the means he employed and the agents 
he chose. It is possible, also, that in the pres- 
ence of timidity or obstruction, he was some- 
times imperious as well as impatient. Nescit 
cedere was the motto of his family. But he 
was a good man, disinterested, genuinely self- 
denying, sincerely religious after his fashion, — a 
fashion perhaps not altogether that of the Wes- 
leys and Whitefields. In the matter of spirits 
and slave labour he was plainly in advance of 
his age ; and if he was not exactly (as Warton 
claimed), **at once a "great hero and a great 
legislator," there can be no doubt as to his 
** Benevolence of Soul," and his unfeigned sym- 
pathy with the oppressed. '' His undertaking 



A Paladin of Philanthropy. 87 

will succeed," said the Governor of South 
Carolina, " for he nobly devotes all his powers 
to serve the poor and rescue them from their 
wretchedness." " He has taken care of us to 
the utmost of his ability," wrote the pastor of 
the grateful Salzburgers. *' Others would not 
in many years have accomplished what he has 
brought about in one." And when, long after, 
the Spaniards sought to prejudice an Indian 
chief against his English friend, he answered, 
" We love him. It is true he does not give us 
silver ; but he gives us everything we want that 
he has. He has given me the coat off his back 
and the blanket from under him." 



THE STORY OF THE ''SPECTATOR." 

A MONG the items of intelligence in that un- 
-**■ rivalled confidential news-letter which Swift 
Vv'as in the habit of scribbling off periodically to 
Mrs. Dingley and Mrs. Johnson at Dublin, there 
are frequent references to the Spectator and its 
predecessor, the Tatter. In September, 1710, 
when the Journal to Stella commences, the Tatter 
had already reached its two hundred and nine- 
teenth number, and it must have been well- 
known to Swift's correspondents, since he speaks 
of it much as folks might speak of any paper 
that everybody is sure to see. Have they 
*'smoakt" his letter (an admirable effort, by 
the way) concerning the corruptions of style ? 
It is greatly liked ; and he himself thinks it ''a 
pure one." Next he is at work on a " poetical 
Description of a Shower in London,'"''- which he 
has finished — "all but the beginning." Why 
does ^^ Madam Stell" persist that he wrote 
" Shaver" ? — he asks later. Elsewhere comes a 
reference to his share in Addison's Adventures 
of a Shilling y^ the original hint for which the 

^Tatler, No. 238. ^Tailer, No. 249. 

88 



The Story of the ♦' Spectator." 89 

writer admits was given to him by a friend with 
*' an inexhaustible Fund of Discourse." Then 
again we learn that Swift has drawn up, jointly 
with Rowe and Prior, a protest against the 
substitution of the words ^' Great Britain " for 
*' England," a proposal which is still under 
debate.^ A page or two farther on, the long- 
pending misunderstanding with Steele has 
reached an acute stage, and the record bears 
witness to it. The Tatlers have fallen off ; he 
never sees either Addison or Steele ; he has 
sent them no more hints. After this final 
announcement (more deadly even than St. John's 
Stamp Act I), one is prepared to hear of the 
collapse of the paper. Oddly enough, it does 
collapse in the very next entry. ^* Steele's last 
Tatter came out to-day." '* It was time, for he 
grew cruel dull and dry." But Swift's love of 
letters is greater than his irritation against his 
alienated friends, and two months after, he is 
writing enthusiastically of Steele's fresh venture. 
" Have you seen the Spectator yet, a paper that 
comes out every day? 'Tis written by Mr. 

1 " In Scotland 35,000 signatures have been put to a 
memorial asking that * Great Britain ' and ' British * should 
be substituted for * England ' and * English ' in State 
documents and official references to National institutions 
like the Army " (.S/. James's Gazette^ June 3, 1897). 



90 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

Sleeky who seems to have gathered new life, 
and have a new fund of wit ; it is in the same 
nature as his Tatlers^ and they have all of them 
had something pretty." The praise was not 
undeserved. By March i6, i7ii,when the 
above was written, the Spectator had been in 
vigorous existence for a fortnight. The short- 
faced sage was already taking the measure of 
mankind ; and if Sir Roger de Coverley had 
been but broadly outlined, the ** Vision of 
Public Credit" had been penned, the story of 
Inkle and Yarico told, and Swift himself — though 
Mrs. Pilkington says he "had not laugh'd 
above twice " in his life — might reasonably have 
relaxed a little over the humours of Nicolini 
and the Lion. The Spectator, in short, had 
already become not merely an indispensable 
^' Part of the Tea Equipage " (as claimed in its 
tenth issue), but a necessary of intellectual life. 
The smart young Templars (in their gorgeous 
dressing-gowns and strawberry sashes) were 
already crying out for it at Serle's and the 
Grecian ; it was permanently en lecture at Will's 
and the St. James's Coffee-house ; solemn 
quidnuncs and deliberate club-oracles (like Mr. 
Nisby of the Citi^en^s Journal) were beginning 
to take it for the text of their daily lucubrations ; 
while Mrs. Betty regularly carried it up at noon 



The Story of the ^'Spectator" 91 

with Clarinda's dish of chocolate, between the 
newest patterns of Mr. Lutestring the mercer 
and the latest poulet from Mr. Froth. 

The farewell number of the Tatler appeared 
on the 2d of January, 17 11; the first number 
of the Spectator on the ist of March following. 
In appearance the two papers were not dis- 
similar. Both were single folio leaves in 
double column ; both — at all events when the 
Tatler was nearing its end — consisted of a 
solitary essay, headed by a Latin quotation 
and followed by a series of advertisements. 
Each was equally open to the charge, which had 
been made by an injured correspondent, of being 
offered to the world on** Tobacco Paper" in 
*' Scurvy Letter." The only material difference 
was that the Tatler was published three times a 
week ; and the Spectator was published daily, 
Sundays excepted, a difference scarcely enough 
in itself, one would suppose, to justify a fresh 
departure. But why the Tatler was prematurely 
concluded at the two hundred and seventy-first 
number, and the Spectator substituted for it, 
remains a problem the solution of which is still 
to seek. Steele's explanation is, that he had 
become individually identified with ' ' Mr. Bicker- 
staff," and that this being so, his own fallible 
personality was powerless to give authority to 



92 MiscellanieSf Second Series. 

his office of Censor. " I shall not carry my 
Humility so far as to call my self a vicious 
Man, but at the same Time must confess, my 
Life is at best but pardonable. And with no 
greater Character than this, a Man would make 
but an indifferent Progress in attacking prevail- 
ing and fashionable Vices which Mr. Bicker- 
staff has done with a Freedom of Spirit that 
would have lost both its Beauty and Efficacy, 
had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele." 
Upon the face of them these are sufficient 
reasons, and they would have sufficed had it not 
been for the fact that the Tatler was almost 
immediately succeeded by another paper which 
— as Swift says truly — was '* in the same nature." 
But it has also been suggested that there were 
other reasons at which Steele himself, in his 
valedictory words, hints vaguely. '<What I 
find is the least excusable Part of all this Work " 
— he tells us — '^is, that I have in some Places 
in it touched upon Matters which concern both 
the Church and State." This obiter dictum 
opens too long and too perplexed an enquiry to 
be here pursued in detail. Briefly stated, it 
would seem that certain utterances of Mr. 
Bickerstaff (not of necessity from Steele's pen) 
had offended the Lord Treasurer, Harley, who 
had come into power while the Tatler was in 



The Story of the '* Spectator:' 93 

progress, and that with those utterances its 
cessation was in some obscure way connected. 
A certain amount of colour is given to this 
contention in a tract by John Gay which 
expressly says that the Taller was laid down as 
a sort of submission to, and composition with, 
the Government for some past offences. But 
here again it is to be observed that the Spectator , 
though, at the outset, professing neutrality 
between Whigs and Tories, neither observed 
nor engaged to observe a total abstinence from 
politics, so that, after all, caprice, or the weari- 
ness of the work which Swift alleges, may have 
played a foremost part in those '^Thousand 
nameless Things" which made it irksome to 
Steele to continue to personate Mr. Isaac 
Bickerstaff. One circumstance, however, is 
beyond all question. Whether Defoe's Review 
or the Athenian Mercury or the London Gazette 
had most to do with the establishment of the 
Taller may be debatable ; but there can be no 
doubt that the Spectator is the legitimate suc- 
cessor of the Taller. The Taller is the 
Spectator in the making ; and the Spectator is the 
developed and perfected Taller, which, begin- 
ning with little save the Quicquid agunt Homines 
of its motto, gradually grew more ethical and 
less topical, restricting itself at last almost 



94 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

exclusively to those separate essays on single 
subjects which we are still wont to associate 
with the name of the Spectator. 

And if it can be proved that we owe the 
Spectator to the Tatler, it is equally demon- 
strable that we owe Addison to Steele. When 
that quondam trooper, ** Christian Hero," and 
stage-moralist, Queen Anne's Gazetteer, cast- 
ing about for something to supplement an in- 
come which had always consisted largely of 
expectations, hit upon the project of a paper 
which should combine the latest Foreign In- 
telligence with the newest Gossip of the Town, 
Addison was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant 
of Ireland. At this date, his contributions to 
literature consisted practically of an Opera of 
Rosamond which had failed ; of a volume of 
travels on the continent which (like Du H aide's 
China) might have been written at home ; and 
of the Campaign, a long-incubated^ "Gazette 
in Rhyme'" concerning the Battle of Blenheim, 
which included a fortunate simile about an angel 
in a whirlwind. With Steele's literary venture 
came Addison's literary opportunity. When, in 

i"Next week will be Published the long expected 
Poem, by Joseph Addison, Esq. : called The Campaign 
and sold by Mr. Jacob Tonson " (Z%<f Diverting Post, 
Dec, 2-9, 1704). 



The Story of the ** Spectator:' 95 

the new periodical which his old school-fellow's 
inventive spirit had started, he recognised a re- 
mark of his own, he sent him a contribution ; 
and although it was some time before he began 
to write regularly, it was clear from the first 
that he had found a favourable vehicle for his 
unique and hitherto latent gifts of. humorous 
observation. Steele's own qualifications were, 
of course, by no means contemptible. He was 
a sympathetic critic ; he had the true journalistic 
faculty of taking fire readily ; his knowledge of 
the contemporary theatre was not only excep- 
tional but experimental ; and he had the keenest 
eye for the ridiculous, the kindest heart for sor- 
row and distress. But there can be little doubt 
that in the finely-wrought La Bruy^re-like 
sketches of Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the 
Political Upholsterer, in the Rabelaisian 
Frozen, Voices and the delightful Adventures of 
a Shillings Addison at once attained a level 
higher than anything at which his friend had 
aimed. Re-acting upon Steele's own efforts, 
these papers stimulated him to new ambitions, 
and gave to the latter half of the Taller as he 
himself admitted, an elegance, a purity, and a 
correctness which had been no initial part of his 
hastily-conceived and hurriedly-executed scheme. 
*' I fared" — he said, in words which have 



96 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

become historical — 'Mike a distressed Prince 
who calls in a powerful Neighbour to his Aid ; 
I was undone by my Auxiliary; when I had 
once called him in, I could not subsist without 
Dependence on him." And whatever may be 
the secret history of the cessation of the Taller^ 
incapacity to carry it on can hardly be urged as 
an explanation. For, when it came to an end, 
not only had its original projector raised his own 
standard, but during the course of his enterprise, 
he had secured the services of an anonymous 
assistant whose equipment in the way of delicate 
irony and whimsical fancy has never yet been 
surpassed. 

Under these auspices then, the Spectator 
made its first appearance on the ist of March, 
171 1. Of the circumstances which preceded 
that appearance nothing definite has been re- 
corded. Some outline, some scheme of cam- 
paign should — one would think — have been de- 
termined upon before publication, but the in- 
formation which has come down to us tends 
rather the other way. Tickell, who, ten years 
later, edited Addison's works with a strong bias 
in his deceased patron's favour, says, in apolo- 
gising for including one of Steele's papers 
among Addison's, that "the Plan of the Spec- 
tator, as far as regards the feigned Person of the 



The Storf of the " Spectator:^ 97 

Author, and of the several characters that com- 
pose his Club, was projected in concert with 
Sir Richard Steele," — a statement which 
some later critics have most unaccountably in- 
terpreted to mean that the honours belong ex- 
clusively to Addison. But almost in his next 
sentence Tickell goes on — '* As for the distinct 
Papers, they were never or seldom shewn to 
each other, by their respective Authors," — 
which is hardly in favour of any elaborate pro- 
gramme or associated action. Indeed, apart 
from a certain rough agreement as to the first 
two numbers, or *' Prefatory Discourses," there 
seems to have been no such programme, and 
any assertion to the contrary prompts the sus- 
picion that the Spectator, notwithstanding the 
famous ** nocturna versate manu, versate diurna'^ 
of Johnson, is more talked about than read. 
In Number i, which is undeniably by Addison, 
he sketched lightly and with his own inimitable 
touch, that taciturn ** Looker-on," whose 
" Sheet-full of Thoughts " was to appear every 
morning, Sundays excepted. Following this, in 
Number 2, which is as unmistakably Steele's, 
was dashed off the little group of ** select 
Friends " who were to make up the Spectator 
Club, headed by the kit-cat of Sir Roger de 
Coverley. The other five members were a 



98 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

Templar, a Clergyman, a Soldier (Captain 
Sentry) a Merchant (Sir Andrew Freeport) and 
Will Honeycomb, an elderly fine gentleman 
and Man of Pleasure. A Committee from this 
body was to sit nightly in order to inspect " all 
such Papers as may contribute to the Advance- 
ment of the Publick Weal." Some of Addison's 
advocates have attempted to transfer the credit 
of this second number from Steele to Addison 
by suggesting that the characters were 
** touched" by the latter. But even if the 
style did not exhibit all the indications of that 
hasty genius which contrived the ** Trumpet 
Club " in the Tatler, the paper is disfigured by 
a piece of negligent bad taste which makes it 
more than probable that Addison never saw it 
until it was published. The passage concerning 
beggars and gipsies in the description of Sir 
Roger, is one which Steele's rapid pen may 
conceivably have thrown off in a hurry ; but it is 
also one to which Addison — assuming him at this 
stage to have had the slightest mental idea of 
the character whose last hours he was after- 
wards to describe with such effective simplicity 
— could never have given his imprimatur. It is 
an outrage far less excusable than the historical 
lapse committed by Tickell, when, in No. 410, 
he allowed the Knight for a moment to mistake 



The Story of the '* Spectator:' 99 

a woman of the town for a " Woman of 
Honour," — a mistake, after all, no worse than 
that later, and more memorable misadventure, 
where an entire family circle were deceived in 
the identity of my Lady Blarney and Miss 
Carolina Wilelmina Amelia Skeggs. 

The truth would appear to be, that the char- 
acter of the Worcestershire baronet, so happily 
developed in the sequel under the pens of the 
two friends, was, at the outset, rather a lucky 
accident of invention than the first stage in a 
preconceived creation ; and many numbers suc- 
ceeded to Steele's description of the Club be- 
fore Sir Roger de Coverley was again seriously 
presented to the reader. He is indeed men- 
tioned incidentally three or four times in sub- 
sequent Spectators y but it is not until No. 106 
that he really begins to assume the importance 
which has made him a personage in English 
Literature. In accordance with a hint casually 
dropped in No. 46, Addison in No. 106 gives 
an account of the Coverley household with its 
old-fashioned ways, which include an old chap- 
lain who understands ''a little of Back-Gam- 
mon," ^ and reads the sermons of Tillotson and 

* Swift apparently thought this accomplishment a sine 
qua non in a chaplain. « Can the parson of the parish 



100 Miscellanies, Second Series, 

Barrow from his pulpit instead of his own com- 
positions. Steele came after with another 
paper, on the Coverley servants ; and Addison 
followed that by the masterpiece of Will 
Wimble, the poor gentleman and younger 
brother, who is almost as well-known in letters 
as the Knight himself. In the next of the 
series, Steele, with a hand scarcely less skilful 
than that of his colleague, describes the family 
picture gallery ; and certainly nothing in Addi- 
son is happier than its closing touch about the 
ancestor who "narrowly escaped being killed 
in the Civil Wars" by being " sent out of the 
Field upon a private Message, the Day before 
the Battel of Worcester." Three papers 
farther on, Addison depicts a country Sunday ; 
and Steele responds with an account of Sir 
Roger and the *' perverse beautiful Widow" of 
the introductory sketch. Then we have Sir 
Roger hare-hunting ; Sir Roger on his way to 
the County-Assizes delivering the time-hon- 
oured judgment that ** much might be said on 
both Sides ; " and Sir Roger interviewing the 
Gipsies. After this, very little is heard of the 
Knight until he comes to London, and goes (by 
this time always with Addison) to Westminster 

play at backgammon ? " — he asks Lady Queensberry, 
when he is proposing to visit her at Amesbury. 



The Slory of the '' Spectator.'' loi 

Abbey, to Drury-Lane Playhouse (to see Anne 
Oldfield as Andromache in the Distrest Mother 
of Mr. Phillips), and to the Spring-Garden at 
Vauxhall. The last record of him — for we may 
neglect the ambiguous tavern-incident referred 
to in our previous paragraph — is the admirable 
letter, again by Addison, in which Mr. Biscuit, 
the butler, describes his master's last illness and 
death. It has been sometimes asserted that 
Addison, after the fashion of Cervantes, killed 
his hero to prevent greater liberties being taken 
with him ; but the interval between the Tickell 
escapade and the butler's despatch is too wide 
to establish any definite connection between the 
respective occurrences, and, moreover, the 
Club itself was obviously being wound up. Of 
its remaining members the authors never made 
any material use. In the allotment of the char- 
acters, it is but reasonable to suppose that 
Addison (in addition to Sir Roger) would have 
devoted himself to the Templar and Will 
Honeycomb, while the Soldier, the Merchant, 
and the Clergyman would fall to the share of 
Steele, In practice, however, nothing so defi- 
nite ever came to pass. After Steele's first 
sketch in No. 2, the Clergyman only once re- 
appears, while the Templar is little but a name. 
Sir Andrew Freeport delivers himself occasion- 



102 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

ally upon matters of trade, and Captain Sentry 
occupies a couple of papers. As for the gallant 
Will Honeycomb, though he can scarcely be 
styled a personnage muet, his chief contribution 
to the interest of the fable is the marriage to a 
country girl (in a grogram gown) with which he 
quits both the Town and the scene. Whether 
these portraits had actual originals is doubtful. 
Tickell, who should have been well informed, 
regarded the whole of the characters as 
*' feigned," and Steele, in No. 262, expressly 
disclaims the delineation of his contemporaries. 
The reader, he says, would think the better of 
him, if he knew the pains he was at in qualify- 
ing what he wrote after such a manner, that 
nothing might be interpreted as aimed at private 
persons. But his disclaimer has been as futile 
as the disclaimers of Hogarth and Fielding; 
and, as usual, Sir Roger and Will Wimble, 
Captain Sentry and the Widow, have not been 
allowed to lack for models. 

The Coverley sequence and the proceedings of 
the Club must not, however, be supposed to 
constitute the sole theme of the Spectator, or 
even to present its chief feature of interest. 
Something more than the fitful apparition of a 
few figures whose sayings and doings scarcely 
occupy fifty papers out of five hundred and 



The Story of the ** Spectator.'' 103 

fifty-five must clearly have been required to al- 
lure and retain the interest of subscribers v^hose 
enthusiasm survived an increased price and a 
prohibitive Stamp Tax. At this time of day, it 
is probable that the graver and more critical 
efforts of Addison, and the edifying lay-sermon 
which represents the '* Christian Hero " side in 
Steele would not find a very attentive audience. 
But it must be remembered that, when they were 
first penned, it was a new thing to discover poetry 
in Chevy Chase and the Children in the Wood, 
or to include, in pages professedly occupied 
by social sketches and sub-humorous satire, dis- 
quisitions upon Death, Benevolence, Ambition, 
and Solitude. Under Anna Augusta, Steele's 
moral essays and Addison's criticisms enjoyed 
and deserved a vogue which new methods of 
analysis and other fashions of exhortation have 
long made impossible ; and in the old Beauties, 
these papers occupy a far larger place than the 
studies of contemporary manners and the 
sketches of individual types which to us now 
form the main attraction of the Spectator. Of 
these sketches and studies there are enough and 
to spare. Neither Addison nor Steele, it is true, 
ever excelled the ** first sprightly runnings" of 
the Taller, and it may be doubted if either af- 
terwards produced anything that really rivals 



104 Miscellanies f Second Series, 

Mr. Bickerstaff's ** Visit to a Friend" or (in its 
kind) the perennial " Ned Softly" of the earlier 
paper. On the other hand the " Meditations 
in Westminster Abbey," the ** Vision of Mirzah," 
the "Everlasting Club," the admirable *' Citi- 
zen's" and "Fine Lady's" Journals, and the 
various papers on Headdresses, Hoods, Patches, 
Fans and a hundred other themes belong to 
Addison and the Spectator, while Steele, in the 
same pages, has many essays which reach the 
level of his excellent " Death of Estcourt," his 
" Ramble from Richmond to London," his 
"Stage Coach Journey "and his " Story of Bru- 
netta and Phyllis." Nothing can give a better 
notion of the sustained fertility of the two 
friends than the statement that, out of the above- 
mentioned total of five hundred and fifty-five 
numbers, more than five hundred were written 
by Steele and the still nameless " Auxiliary," to 
whom, at the close, he again, over his own sig- 
nature, pays grateful tribute. "I am indeed 
much more proud of his long continued Friend- 
ship, than I should be of the Fame of being 
thought the Author of any Writings which he 
himself is capable of producing. I remember 
when I finished the Tender Husband, I told him 
there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we 
might some time or other publish a Work writ- 



The Story of the ** Spectator.'" 105 

ten by us both, which should bear the name of 
the Monument^ in Memory of our Friendship." 
But if Addison's assistance as an anonymous 
contributor to his friend's enterprise had its ad- 
vantages, it must be confessed that — as far as 
that friend is concerned — it also had its draw- 
backs. Although at first the result was to iden- 
tify Steele with the entire work, much more 
comprehensively than the circumstances war- 
ranted (the old folio titles of the Spectator, m 
fact, attribute the whole of the papers to him),^ 
upon the other hand he occasionally became 
personally responsible for utterances not his 
own, which had given grave offence. So that 
if, in Swift's words, ** he flourish'd by imputed 
Wit," he also suffered by imputed Satire. 
*' Many of the Writings now published as his 
[Addison's]," he says in his letter to Congreve, 
*' I have been very patiently traduced and ca- 
lumniated for ; as they were pleasantries and 
oblique strokes upon certain of the wittiest men 
of the Age." When, in Tickell's edition of 
1 72 1, Addison's contributions to the Tatter 
were definitely identified, and their extent and 

1 One of these, now before us, runs — " A Compleat Sett of 
the Spectators, By Richard Steele, Esq., London : Printed 
for S. Buckley and J. Tonson, and sold by A. Baldwin, 
near the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, MDCCXIII. " 



io6 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

import thoroughly apprehended, people began 
— perhaps naturally at first — to transfer a dis- 
proportionate amount of the credit to Addison, 
and to assign a much lower place to Steele, 
who was sometimes spoken of as if he were no 
more than a merely colourless mediocrity, to 
whose good fortune it had fallen to farm a 
genius. This reaction, in spite of the protests 
of such critics as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Leigh 
Hunt, may be said to have culminated in Ma- 
caulay's brilliant Edinburgh article of 1843 on 
Miss Aikin's " Addison." Here Steele is sys- 
tematically depressed to exalt his friend, whose 
worst essay — in the great critical special plead- 
er's opinion — was as good as the best essay of 
any of his coadjutors. Twelve years after, in 
March, 1855, Mr. John Forster valiantly took 
up the cudgels for Steele in the Quarterly^ and 
from this date Steele's character may be said to 
have been gradually rehabilitated. That Ad- 
dison was the major contributor to the 5p^c/a/or, 
and that he had gifts of style and expression to 
which his colleague could not pretend, may be 
granted. But it must also be granted that, as 
compared with that colleague, he had some very 
manifest advantages. He was, and remained, a 
contributor only, working at his ease ; and, in 
any failure of fancy, he could — as Tickell allows 



The Story of the ''Spectator.'' 107 

— fall back upon long-accumulated material 
(such as his essays on Milton, Wit, Imagination 
and the like) to serve his turn. Steele, on the 
contrary, was not only responsible editor,^ but 
sub-editor as well, and when matter or invention 
ran short, he was obliged to " make up" with 
the communications of his correspondents. In 
the way of reserve '* copy," he had nothing but 
a few of his own old love-letters to his wife and 
a quotation or two from the *' Christian Hero." 
These conditions were not favourable to " cor- 
rectness," if ''correctness" had been his aim ; 
and they should be taken into account in assess- 
ing the relative merits of the two friends, who, 
it must be noted, never succeeded as well when 
they worked apart as they succeeded when they 
worked together. Although they may not have 
revised each other's writings, it was the conjunc- 
tion of their individualities which made the 
Spectator what it remains, — the most readable 
of the Eighteenth-Century Essayists ; and in 
this conjunction Steele was the originating, and 
Addison the elaborating, intellect. The primary 
invention, the creative idea, came from Steele ; 

> " When a Man has engaged to keep a Stage-Coach," 
says he in Taller No. 12, "he is obliged, whether he has 
Passengers or not, to set out." Fielding has the same 
thought in the « initial essay " to Book II of Tom Jones. 



io8 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

the shaping power, the decorative art from Ad- 
dison.^ What Steele with his ^'veined human- 
ity" and ready sympathy derived from " conver- 
sation," — to use the eighteenth-century term for 
intercourse with the world — he flung upon his 
paper then and there without much labour of 
selection ; what Addison perceived in his en- 
vironment when — to use Steele's phrase — he 
began ** to look about him and like his com- 
pany," he carried carefully home to carve into 
some gem of graceful raillery or refined expres- 
sion. Each writer has, naturally, the defects of 
his qualities. If Addison delights us by his 
finish, he repels us by his restraint and absence 
of fervour ; if Steele is careless, he is always 
frank and genial. Addison's papers are faultless 
in their art, and in this way achieve an excel- 
lence which is beyond the reach of Steele's 
quicker and more impulsive nature. But for 
words which the heart finds when the head is 
seeking ; for phrases glowing with the white 
heat of a generous emotion ; for sentences 
which throb and tingle with manly pity or cour- 
ageous indignation — we must turn to the essays 
of Steele. 

^What follows — to obviate laborious paraphrase — is 
borrowed almost textually from the writer's life of Steele 
(1886). 



** DEAR MRS. DELANY. 

MARY GRANVILLE, later Mrs. Pen- 
darves, and eventually Mrs. Delany, was 
certainly blessed with length of days. She was 
born in May, 1700, some twenty-one months 
before Sorrel stumbled over a mole-hill at 
Hampton Court, and broke the collar-bone of 
King William the Deliverer. She died in April, 
1788, under the third of the Georges, only a few 
weeks after the opening of the interminable trial 
of Warren Hastings. 

Many events, many changes, came to pass in 
those five reigns, and eight and eighty years. 
It was the period of Marlborough's famous 
battles in Flanders; it was the period of the 
two Jacobite risings ; of the Seven Years' War ; 
of the struggle for American Independence ; of 
the *' No Popery "riots of '80. When Mary 
Granville was a child, people were reading the 
Taller and Spectalor in full-bottomed periwigs 
and elaborate " heads"; at the date of her death 
the great Times itself was being perused by a 
generation with frizzed hair and pigtails. In her 
girlhood, she had devoured the '*vast French 
109 



no Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

romances, neatly gilt " of the Rape of the Lock; 
as a middle-aged woman, in place of the 
Scud^rys and Calpren^des, she was absorbed by 
the newer methods of Richardson and Fielding ; 
and she survived to study a fresh variety of 
fiction in the Evelina and Cecilia of Frances 
Burney. Vanderbank and Charles Jervas were 
the fashionable painters of her youth ; she out- 
lasted the entire artistic career of Hogarth (who 
helped to teach her drawing) ; and when at last 
her own end came, Gainsborough and Reynolds 
were not far from theirs. 

During the earlier half of her lifetime, Pope 
reigned paramount in poetry, and Milton was 
practically forgotten : during the latter half, 
people were beginning to forget Pope, and to 
remember Milton. Cowper, and Blake, and 
Burns were writing ; the Romantic revival was 
in the air. And not only was Mrs. Delany co- 
existent with notabilities ; but she was personally 
acquainted with many of them. She corre- 
sponded with Swift ; she was intimate with 
Handel, and Garrick, and Horace Walpole ; 
she knew Wesley and Hannah More ; she knew 
the erudite Mrs. Montagu and the aristocratic 
Mrs. Boscawen. She was the playmate and 
associate of Matthew Prior's *' Kitty," 
Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry and 



*^ Dear Mrs. Delany'* in 

Dover; she was the lifelong ally of his 
** Peggy," Margaret Cavendish Harley, 
Duchess of Portland ; she was own cousin to 
the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, and she 
was the "Dear Mrs. Delany" of *' great 
George " himself and his consort Queen 
Charlotte. Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, she 
did not know, and apparently did not desire to 
know. Yet it is the Doctor who has preserved 
what another of her friends, Edmund Burke, 
had been heard to affirm in her favour. She was 
(declared Burke) '* a truly great woman of 
fashion," and ** not only the woman of fashion 
of the present age, but the highest bred woman 
in the world, and the woman of fashion of 
all ages." 

For this comprehensive, and yet imperfect 
commendation, — for Mary Delany was some- 
thing more than a mere grande dame, — she had 
one indispensable qualification, good birth. 
Among her ancestors she numbered that heroic 
Sir Richard Grenville of Kingsley's Westward 
Ho and Tennyson's Revenge^ and his scarcely 
less illustrious grandson, the Royalist Sir Bevil, 
who has been sung by Hawker of Morwenstow. 
Her paternal uncle was George, Lord Lans- 
downe, that '* Granville, the polite," for whom 
{^^non injussa cano"") Pope rhymed Windsor 



112 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Forest. As her father was a younger son, and 
consequently a poor man, she was brought up at 
Whitehall by an aunt. Lady Stanley, one of 
Queen Mary's maids of honour, and to be a maid 
of honour she too was at first destined, Queen 
Anne herself putting down her name for that 
distinction. But at seventeen another vocation 
in life was found for her in a queer mariage de 
convenance, her suitor being an old friend of 
Lord Lansdowne, Mr. William Pendarves of 
Roscrow, in Cornwall. In addition to the 
drawback of being nearly sixty, Mr. Pendarves 
had several eighteenth-century characteristics 
which were scarcely recommendations. He was 
as fat as Parson TruUiber; as red faced as 
Addison's Tory Fox-hunter ; as gouty as Lord 
Chalkstone ; and, after wedlock, seems to have 
contracted or developed the objectionable 
custom of coming drunk to bed which was 
observed by Farquhar's Squire Sullen, whom, 
indeed, he very generally resembled. But 
*' Granville the polite," favoured his advances, 
going as far even as to threaten to have a rival 
suitor dragged through the horse-pond ; and, in 
171 7, much against her will, Mary Granville 
was united to her '^Gromio," as she calls him. 
He, in due time, transferred his bride to a 
ruinous and Radcliffian castle in Cornwall. 



*' Dear Mrs. Delany." 113 

Apart from the detail that he was " furiously 
jealous," and, as already stated, habitually 
intemperate, he does not seem to have treated 
his wife harshly. But when in 1724, he died 
suddenly, she can scarcely have honestly 
regretted him, since, against all precedent in 
such cases, he left her poor. 

She had been born with the century, and was 
consequently still young at her first husband's 
death. Already, during his lifetime, she had 
not wanted for admirers, nor did she lack them 
in her early widowhood. One of her suitors 
was Lord Baltimore ; another Lord Tyrconnel. 
In 1730, she and her sister Anne, under the 
style of Aspasia and Selina, carried on a relig- 
ious flirtation with John Wesley, who had not 
yet started for Georgia, or experienced the fas- 
cinations of the storekeeper's niece at Savan- 
nah. Some of Wesley's biographers, indeed, 
are disposed to think that it would not have 
taken much to have transformed Mrs. Pen- 
darves into Mrs. Wesley. But her matrimonial 
experiences had not been promising, and for 
the present she seems to have preferred to a 
fresh connection the freedom of a modest in- 
come and a large circle of friends. She was 
fond of drawing and painting (she executed a 
charming large-eyed picture of the Duchess of 



114 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Queensberry) ; and she was a genuine lover of 
good music, including that unpopular Italian 
opera against which her master Hogarth had 
pointed his sharpest etching-needle. In 173 1 
she went with a friend to Ireland where she 
stayed at St. Stephen's Green with the Bishop 
of Killala and his wife, and made acquaintance 
with Swift, and Swift's friend, Dr. Patrick 
Delany. Swift seems at once to have admitted 
her to that select circle of intellectual women 
whom it pleased him to lecture, pet and patronise, 
and he wrote to her not unfrequently, both dur- 
ing her stay in Ireland, and after her return to 
England. *' He [Swift] calls himself * my mas- 
ter,' and corrects me when I speak bad Eng- 
lish, or do not pronounce my words distinctly,'* 
she says. Of her spelling he must be held to 
have approved, since he does not condemn it. 
Indeed, he admits that since he was young, 
there had been a great improvement in this re- 
spect. "A woman of quality, who had excel- 
lent good sense, was formerly my correspondent ; 
but she scrawled and spelt like a Wapping 
wench, having been brought up in a court be- 
fore reading was thought of any use to a female, 
and I know several others of very high quality 
with the same defect." Like the Duchess of 
Queensberry, Mrs. Delany seems to have en- 



''Dear Mrs. Delany:' 115 

deavoured to persuade Swift to come to Eng- 
land, and particularly to Bath, — Bath so con- 
veniently contracted in its comforts and amuse- 
ments as compared with London, where, owing 
to its *' enormous size," you must spend half 
the day in getting from one place to another. 
This was in 1736 (when, as she notes, Fielding 
was playing Pasquin to overflowing audiences) ; 
and five and thirty years later, we shall find Mr. 
Matthew Bramble making the same complaint 
in Humphry Clinker. " Pimlico and Knights- 
bridge," he says, '* are almost joined to Chelsea 
and Kensington ; and if this infatuation con- 
tinues for half a century, I suppose the whole 
county of Middlesex will be covered by brick." 
"What would they say now, these good people, 
to the London of to-day I Large or small, how- 
ever, Swift was not to be lured from the Ire- 
land he hated. " I cannot make shifts," he said 
in 1734, "lie rough, and be undone by starving 
in scanty lodgings, without horses, servants, and 
conveniences." Moreover his deafness and 
giddiness, as well as other serious ailments, 
were increasing, and before many months were 
past, his affairs were in the hands of trustees. 
After the beginning of 1736 no more letters 
came to Mrs. Pendarves from the correspondent 
of whom she had been so proud ; and the only 



ii6 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

other reference to him that need be noted here 
relates to his aspect not long before his death in 
1745. His mental state rendered him a pitiable 
sight, though his personal appearance — as is 
often the case — had improved with the progress 
of his malady. From increasing stoutness, the 
hard lines had faded from his face, and his long 
silver hair and comely countenance made him a 
"very venerable figure." 

As already stated, one of the acquaintances 
Mrs. Pendarves had made in Ireland was Swift's 
friend and subsequent biographer, Dr. Patrick 
Delany. It was indeed at Dr. Delany's that 
she first met Swift, who was a regular attendant 
there on the doctor's reception Thursdays, and 
she seems to have been early attracted by 
Delany's wit, learning and social qualities. 
*' Dr. Delany is as agreeable a companion as 
ever I met with, and one who condescends to 
converse with women, and treat them like rea- 
sonable creatures," she says. " These [she had 
just been speaking of Wesley] are the sort of 
men I find myself inclined to like, and wish I 
had such a set in England." A short time be- 
fore she had written : — " Last Sunday I went to 
hear Dr. Delany preach, and was extremely 
pleased with him. His sermon was on the 
duties of wives to husbands, a subject of no 



*' Dear Mrs. Delany.'* 117 

great use to me at present." At this time 
Delany was married. But some years later he 
lost his wife ; and eighteen months after that 
occurrence, in April, 1743, he proposed to Mrs. 
Pendarves. He was then fifty-nine, and she 
was nearing forty-three. He made his offer in 
an exceedingly manly and straightforward man- 
ner, and although by her family the matter 
seems to have been covertly regarded as rather 
a mesalliance, she eventually married him in the 
following June. Then after a round of visits, 
they took up residence in Clarges Street, pend- 
ing their return to Ireland, and the obtaining of 
preferment for " D. D." [Delany] — a task in 
which his wife seems to have been very laudably 
active. 

Equipped with an admiring husband, and as- 
sured of a definite establishment, this is, per- 
haps, the best moment to attempt some descrip- 
tion of Mrs. Delany herself. In her picture by 
Opie in the National Portrait Gallery, the frame 
of which was designed by Horace Walpole, she 
appears as a serene and dignified old lady, who, 
in her prime, must have possessed remarkable 
personal attractions, as indeed the number and 
assiduity of her admirers sufficiently testify. 
She had an excellent figure, beautiful shining 
hair which curled naturally, a fine red and white 



ii8 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

complexion which owed nothing to art, and a 
very sweet smile. Of her eyes, her enthusiastic 
second husband declared "that he could never 
tell the colour," but to the best of his belief, 
*'they were what Solomon calls dove's eyes," 
and he adds that " she was almost the only 
woman he ever saw whose lips were scarlet and 
her bloom beyond expression." For her time 
she must have been unusually well educated, 
besides being an expert and indefatigable 
needlewoman, and one of her first enterprises 
after her second marriage, was to turn Paradise 
Lost into an oratorio for Handel. "She read 
and wrote two languages correctly and judi- 
ciously." She was "a mistress of her pen in 
every art to which a pen could be applied. She 
wrote a fine hand in the most masterly manner, 
and she designed with amazing correctness and 
skill." This was written in 1757. But it was 
only after the death of her affectionate panegyr- 
ist that she developed her crowning accom- 
plishment, the famous "paper Mosaiks" now 
in the Print Room of the British Museum. 
These she commenced, she says, in her seventy- 
fourth year, and she continued to work at them 
to within five years of her death. Briefly 
described, her method consisted in the minute 
piecing together of coloured paper cut so as to 



*' Dear Mrs. Delany,'' 119 

produce accurate imitations of flowers and plaints. 
In this art she attained a proficiency so extra- 
ordinary as to deserve not only the admiration 
of Walpole and Reynolds, but of botanists such 
as Banks and Erasmus Darwin. Failing in- 
spection of the work itself, those who wish for a 
further account of Mrs. Delany's achievements 
in this way, cannot do better than consult a 
charming rdverk on the subject contributed to 
Temple Bar for December, 1897, by Mrs. 
Edmund Gosse. 

This, however, is somewhat to anticipate, as 
the famous paper flora was the recreation of 
Mrs. Delany's widowed old age, and she had a 
long period of wedded happiness as the wife of 
Swift's amiable biographer. A bishopric she 
did not succeed in obtaining for him ; but she 
got him made Dean of Down. Henceforth her 
life was spent between Delville (Dr. Delany's 
villa near Dublin, rich with its memories of 
Swift and Stella), the Deanery at Down, and 
annual visits to England where her old aristo- 
cratic friends and particularly the Duchesses of 
Queensberry and Portland welcomed her 
eagerly. Her ceaseless industry always kept 
her pleasantly busy. Now she is arranging the 
Bulstrode miniatures ("such Petitots, such 
Olivers, such Coopers I ") ; now she is painting 



120 MiscellanieSy Second Series. 

a Madonna and Child for the chapel at Down, 
or making shell-flowers for its ceiling, now 
knotting (in " sugar plum" work) interminable 
chair covers and decorations for Delville whose 
tapestries and mirrors and marble tables and 
Japan chests afford her all the pleasures of a 
proprietor. Then there are long evening read- 
ings which give an idea of her likes and dislikes. 
For Sunday there is Berkeley's Alciphron, while 
of week days Carte's Life of Ormonde is a good 
standing dish. Of Chesterfield's CEconomjr of 
Life she approves " all but the chapter on Love " 
(which, be it said in parenthesis, is harmless to 
insipidity). Her favourite novelist is Richard- 
son ; and his Clarissa, till Grandison comes out, 
her favourite novel. Another much discussed 
work is not unnaturally Orrery's Life of Smft, 
the errors and ineptitudes of which prompted 
her husband's own subsequent book on the 
subject. As perhaps might be expected, Field- 
ing finds little favour with the Delville party. 
" We are reading Mr. Fielding's Amelia^''' 
writes Mrs. Delany in 1752. *' Mrs. Donnellan 
and I don't like it at all ; D. D. [the Dean] 
won't listen to it. Our next important reading 
will be Betsy Thoughtless [Mrs. Heywood's] ; I 
wish Richardson would publish his good man 
and put all these frivolous authors out of coun- 



*' Dear Mrs. Delanyy 121 

tenance." Frivolous is scarcely the right word 
for Fielding ; and one resents the bracketing 
with Amelia of the very second-rate Betsy 
Thoughtless. But Mrs. Donnellan was the 
favourite correspondent to whom Richardson 
abused his rival ; and Mrs. Delany's sister Mrs. 
Dewes was another of the circle of admirers 
who were honoured with the good printer's 
epistles. Imperfect sympathy with Fielding is 
therefore to be anticipated, and we know be- 
sides, from Fielding himself, that his last novel 
was but coldly received by the fashionable 
world.^ Another of the Delville antipathies is 
however more difficult to understand. *'The 
Dean," says his lady in April, 1760, ** is indeed 
very angry with the author of Tristram Shandy, 
and those who do not condemn the work as it 
deserves ; it has not [entered ?] and will not 
enter this house, especially now your account is 
added to a very bad one we had heard before." 
Again, ** D. D. is not a little offended with Mr. 
Sterne, his book is read here as in London, and 
diverts more than it offends." Why Dr. Delany, 
who had been the intimate friend of Swift in his 
last days, should have drawn so hard a line at 
Sterne, of whose masterpiece, moreover, only 
^ See the paper in this volume on The Covent-Garden 
Journal. 



122 Miscellanies f Second Series, 

two volumes had appeared, is a point which re- 
quires elucidation. 

On May 6, 1768, Dr. Delany died, in his 
eighty-fourth year, and was buried at Delville. 
By this time his widow was sixty-eight. The 
last years of her married life had not been with- 
out cares arising from money difficulties and the 
failing health of her husband, after whose death, 
the Duchess of Portland carried her old friend 
off for a long visit to Bulstrode (in Bucks), 
and eventually persuaded her to settle among 
her friends in London. This she did first in 
Thatched House Court, Little St. James Street ; 
and, from December, 1771, in St. James's Place, 
where seventeen years later, she died. She was 
buried in her parish church of St. James's, where 
still may be read Bishop Hurd's inscription tes- 
tifying to her ** singular ingenuity and polite- 
ness " and her " unaffected piety." Hurd was 
a dry word-picker and precisian ; but these par- 
ticular epithets are not ill-chosen. Among Mrs. 
Delany's chief attractions must certainly have 
been her many accomplishments ; and it was no 
doubt owing to her unvarying amiability and 
well-bred amenity that she was such an universal 
favourite. One feels that she must have been 
good to look at and to live with, and that she 
must have represented in all its soothing per- 



** Dear Mrs. Delanyy 123 

fection that leisured and measured old world 
mode of address and conversation which has 
departed with the advent of telegrams and snap- 
shot portraits. It is easy to conceive her as 
the *'Dear Mrs. Delany" of her environment, 
— as the handsome and wonderful old lady 
whom every one delighted to fondle and make 
much of (including the Royal Family 1) ; who 
was so sympathetic and so lovable, and whose 
endless fund of anecdotes of Swift and Pope, 
coupled with her extraordinary achievements in 
needlework and cut paper (at her age too I) 
made her almost a curiosity. Nor must it be 
forgotten that, besides being cultivated and ac- 
complished when these things were rare, she 
seems to have also been what was rarer still, 
a woman of unblemished character in a de- 
cidedly difRcult society, and, in an unobtrusive 
way, sincerely religious. 

Her life has been said to have more of an- 
ecdote — in the Johnsonian sense — than actual 
incident. Nevertheless the two series of her 
Autobiography and Correspondence, as edited 
by the late Lady Llanover, occupy no fewer 
than six bulky volumes. Apart from the grad- 
ual disclosure of the singularly composed and 
sweet-blooded nature to which we have above 
referred, they abound in valuable details of the 



124 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

social life of the eighteenth century. But their 
material is by no means of the kind which can 
be lightly summarised in a short paper. There 
are too many names and too many occurrences 
to be scheduled effectively. Here it is a little 
picture of Rousseau's ante-chamber at Paris, 
'^ filled with bird-cages," and guarded byTh^r^se 
Levasseur, vigilant to protect her bon mari from 
inconvenient visitors ; here a reference to Han- 
del's blindness, or Mrs. Woffington's admirable 
acting of Lady Townly, despite her ** disagree- 
able voice" and ** ungainly arms," or Mrs. 
Montagu's **Cupidons" room, which must 
have been even more remarkable than the 
celebrated Peacock Saloon. " How such a 
genius at her age, and so circumstanced, could 
think of painting the walls of her dressing-room 
with bowers of roses and jessamine, entirely 
inhabited by little cupids in all their wanton 
ways, is astonishing." Another page shall give 
you an excellent report of a visit to Garrick at 
Hampton, with a drinking of tea in Shakes- 
peare's temple, under Roubillac's statue, and in 
close proximity to the famous Stratford chair 
designed by Hogarth ; or a description of a 
fete champHre at Lord Stanley's worthy to pair 
off with Walpole's festino at Strawberry, or with 
the notable entertainment given by Miss Pel- 



^' Dear Mrs. Delany.'' 125 

ham at Esher Place to his Grace the Due de 
Nivernais. Not the least interesting of the 
records, as may be anticipated, relate to bygone 
pastimes and costumes, in which latter the va- 
garies of Miss Chudleigh naturally find a men- 
tion. In 1772, she was flaunting it in "a sack 
trimmed with roses of ribbon, in each a large 
diamond, no cap, and diamonds in her hair ; a 
tucker edged with diamonds, and no more of a 
tippet than makes her fair bosom conspicuous 
rather than hides it." Elsewhere there is an 
account of Lady Coventry's coiffure, " a French 
cap that just covered the top of her head, of 
blond, that stood in the form of a butterfly, 
with its wings not quite extended, frilled sort 
of lappets crossing under her chin, and tied 
with pink and green ribbon — a headdress that 
would have charmed a shepherd 1 " Some of 
the designs described are extraordinary. That 
the Duchess of Queensberry's attire should 
have successfully simulated a landscape, with 
** brown hills," tree-stumps gilded by the sun- 
light, and other picturesque accessories, is quite 
in keeping with what we know of the lady 
whom Walpole named " Sa Singularity." We 
must, however, invite the reader to guess to 
whom the following extract refers: — "Her 
petticoat was of black velvet embroidered with 



126 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

chenille, the pattern a large stone vase filled 
with ramping flowers [the italics are Mrs. 
Delany's] that spread almost over a breadth 
. . . from the bottom to the top, between each 
vase of flowers was a pattern of gold shells and 
foliage, embossed and most heavily rich." ^*Je 
vous le donne en dix ; je vous le donne en centj'' 
— as Mme. de S^vign6 would say. The person 
who sported this "laboured piece of finery'* 
was Selina Hastings, Countess of Hunting- 
don, afterwards the respected head of a special 
Methodist connection. 



THE COVENT-GARDEN JOURNAL. 

IN the month of December, 175 1, when Henry 
Fielding issued his last novel of Ameliay 
— ihdX Amelia which Johnson, despite his dislike 
to the author, read through without stopping, 
— -he was close upon forty-five. His health 
was breaking under a complication of disorders, 
and he had not long to live. For three years 
he had been in the Commission of the Peace 
for Middlesex and Westminster, earning — " by 
composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of 
porters and beggars," and *' by refusing to take 
a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly 
would not have had another left — " rather 
more than ;^3oo per annum of " the dirtiest 
money upon earth," and even of this a con- 
siderable portion went to Mr. Brogden, his 
clerk. He also received, he tells us in the 
Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, "a yearly pen- 
sion out of the public service-money," the 
amount of which is not stated ; and he was 
in addition, as appears from his will, possessed 
of twenty shares in that multifarious enterprise, 
puffed obliquely in Book V of Amelia, the 
127 



128 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Universal Register Office, which was Estate 
Office, Lost Property Office, Servants' Registry, 
Curiosity Shop, and several other things beside. 
He lived at Bow Street, in a house belonging 
to his patron, John, Duke of Bedford, which 
house, during its subsequent tenure by his 
brother and successor, John Fielding, was des- 
troyed by the Gordon rioters ; and he had a 
cottage or country-box on the highroad between 
Acton and Ealing, to which he occasionally re- 
tired ; and where, in all probability, his children 
lived with his mother-in-law, Mrs. Daniel. It 
was at this date, and in these circumstances, 
that he projected the fourth of his newspapers. 
The Covent-Garden Journal, concerning which 
the following notice is inserted at the end of the 
second volume of Amelia, coming immediately 
after an advertisement of the Universal Register 
Office: — *'A11 Persons, who intend to take in 
The Covent-Garden Journal, which will be 
certainly published on Saturday the 4th of 
January next. Price 3d. are desired to send 
their Names, and Places of Abode, to the above 
Office, opposite Cecil-Street in the Strand. And 
the said Paper will then be delivered at their 
Houses." 

In conformity with this announcement, the 
first number of The Covent-Garden Journal 



The Covent'Garden Journal, 129 

duly appeared on Saturday, the 4th January, 
1752. It was said to be ''by Sir Alexander 
Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great Britain,'* 
and was "to be continued every Tuesday and 
Saturday." It was " Printed, and Sold by Mrs. 
Dodd, at the Peacock^ Temple-Bar;''' and at 
the Universal Register Office, '* where Adver- 
tisements and Letters to the Author are taken 
in." For the form, it was Cowper's "folio of 
four pages," beginning with an Essay on the 
Spectator pattern, followed by Covent Garden 
news, " Occasional Pieces of Humour," " Mod- 
ern History" from the newspapers '^ cum notis 
variorum,'' Foreign Affairs, and miscellaneous 
advertisements, in which last the Universal 
Register Office and its doings naturally play a 
conspicuous part. In his initial paper, Fielding 
expressly disclaims Politics, as the term is 
understood by his contemporaries, i. e., Faction ; 
personal Slander and Scurrility; and Dulness, 
unless — like his predecessor Steele — he is un- 
able to avoid it. His motive for issuing the 
paper is not explicitly disclosed ; but it may be 
fairly suggested that the advancement of the 
Register Office, in which he and his brother 
were concerned, and the placing on record 
from time to time of the more important cases 
that came before him at Bow Street in his 



1 30 MiscellanieSf Second Series. 

magisterial capacity — were not foreign to his 
project. That the latter was intended to be a 
prominent feature, is plain from his second 
number, where, in promising to make the paper 
"a much better Journal of Occurrences than 
hath been ever yet printed," he says: — '' I have 
already secured the Play-houses, and other 
Places of Resort in this Parish of Covent 
Garden, as I have Mr. Justice Fielding's Clerk, 
who hath promised me the most material 
Examinations before his Master." 

When Cowper described the eighteenth 
century newspaper as a ** folio of four pages" 

he added 

" happy work ! 
"Which not e'en critics criticise." 

To The Covent-Garden Journal this is singu- 
larly inapplicable, since it not only provoked, 
but was calculated to provoke, contemporary 
comment. The pioneer of its '* Occasional 
Pieces of Humour" was *'A Journal of the 
Present Paper War between the Forces under 
Sir Alexander Drawcansir, and the Army of 
Grub-Street:' In his ** Introduction" to this, 
Sir Alexander contended that the Press was in 
the possession of an army of scribblers; and 
that the Government of the State of Criticism 
was usurped by incompetent persons, whose 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 131 

ranks had moreover been swelled by irregulars 
less competent still in the shape of " Beaux, 
Rakes, Templars, Cits, Lawyers, Mechanics, 
School-boys, and fine Ladies," — from which it 
must be concluded that the Republic of Letters, 
even now, has made no exceptional progress. 
To all this ** Swarm of Vandals," the new Cen- 
sor declared war. His idea was not a strikingly 
novel one, either in its inception or its execu- 
tion ; and it is only necessary to quote two 
passages from this source, because of the events 
that followed them. In his second number for 
January 7th, describing the operations of his 
troops. Fielding proceeds — " A little before our 
March, however, we sent a large Body of 
Forces, under the Command of General A. 
Millar [his publisher], to take Possession of the 
most eminent Printing-Houses. The greater 
Part of these were garrisoned by Detachments 
from the Regiment of Grub-Street, who all re- 
tired at the Approach of our Forces. A small 
Body, indeed, under the Command of one 
Peeragrin Puckle, made a slight Show of Re- 
sistance ; but his Hopes were soon found to be 
in Vain [Vane] ; and, at the first Report of the 
Approach of a younger Brother of General 
Thomas Jones, his whole Body immediately 
disappeared, and totally overthrew some of their 



i-ja Miscellanies y Second Series, 

own Friends, who were marching to their 
Assistance, under the Command of one 
Rodorick Random. This Rodorick, in a 
former Skirmish with the People called Critics, 
had owed some slight Success more to the 
Weakness of the Critics, than to any Merit of 
his own." 

The not very formidable satire of this pass- 
age was evidently levelled at Smollett, whose 
Peregrine Pickle had been published at the be- 
ginning of 175 1, with a success to which its 
incorporation into its pages of the scandalous 
Memoirs of Francis Anne, Viscountess Vane, 
— memoirs which Horace Walpole declared 
worthy to be bound up with those of his own 
sister-in-law and Moll Flanders, — had, as 
Fielding's jeu de mots implies, largely con- 
tributed. Sir Alexander further relates that his 
troops, after being rapturously received by the 
Critical garrisons at Tom's in Cornhill and 
Dick's at Temple Bar, blockheaded up the Bed- 
ford Coffee House in Covent Garden, the 
denizens of which were divided in their wel- 
come, part of them being overawed by a 
nondescript Monster with Ass's ears, evidently 
intended for the Lion's Head Letter Box on the 
Venetian pattern (now at "Woburn Abbey), 
which, having honourably served at Button's for 



The Covent'Garden Journal. 1 3 3 

Steele's Guardian, was then doing fatigue duty 
at the Bedford for the " Inspector" of the very 
versatile Dr., or Sir John Hill. As far as it is 
possible to comprehend this somewhat obscure 
quarrel, Fielding, at an earlier and accidental 
meeting, had jocosely, but injudiciously, pro- 
posed to Hill, whom he knew too little, that 
they should make believe to attack one another 
for the public diversion, — a thing which, if it 
had not been much done before, has certainly 
been done since. But Hill, a pompous, un- 
scrupulous man, **gave him away" forthwith. 
The "Inspector" essays were published in 
The London Daily Advertiser, and in No. 268, 
two days later, he retorted in a strain of out- 
raged dignity. He told the private story from 
his own highly virtuous point of view, declared 
that the proposed mock-fight would have been 
a disingenuous trifling with a trusting public, 
patronised Fielding as a paragraphist, and pro- 
nounced him as an essayist to be '* unmeaning, 
inelegant, confused and contradictory." He 
was even base enough to take advantage of Sir 
Alexander's failing health. " I am sorry" (he 
said) ''to insult the departed Spirit of a living 
Author ; but I tremble when I view this In- 
stance of the transitory Nature of what we are 
apt to esteem most our own. I drop a Tear to 



134 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

the short Period of human Genius, when I see, 
after so few Years, the Author of Joseph 
Andrews doating in The Covent-Garden Journal. 
I have an unaffected Pain in being made the 
Instrument of informing him of this : I could 
have wished him to enjoy for Life that Opinion 
he entertains of himself; and never to have 
heard the Determination of the World." Else- 
where he commented ironically on the *' par- 
ticular Orthography" of the word '^Block- 
ade," and altogether scored in a fashion which 
must have been most galling to Fielding, and is 
to-day almost inconceivable to those who keep 
in mind the relative importance which posterity 
has assigned to the performances of '* the 
Author of Amelia'' (as Hill styled him) and the 
performances of the Author of the Adventures 
of Lady Frail^ Fielding was, no doubt, in- 
tensely disgusted, and the next installment of the 
Journal of the War^ after giving briefly his own 
version of the affair, wound up by observing, with 
more bitterness than usual, that *^his Loudness 
[Hill] was not only among the meanest of those 
who ever drew a Pen, but was absolutely the 
vilest Fellow that ever wore a Head."^ 

^This, which came out in 175 1, was a variation by Hill 
upon the story of Lady Vane. 

2 To prove that Fielding's character of Mr. Inspector 



\ 



The Coveni-Garden Journal. 135 

Humiliating, however, as was the procedure 
of Hill, it was nothing to the action of Smol- 
lett a few days subsequently. Seeing that, 
months before, in the first edition of Peregrine 
Pickle, Smollett had ridiculed Fielding's friend, 
Lyttelton, as " Gosling Scrag," — seeing also 
that he had unprovokedly sneered at Fielding 
himself for "marrying his own cook-wench" 
(his second wife, it will be remembered, had 
been the first Mrs. Fielding's maid), and for 
settling down ''in his old age, as a trading 
Westminster justice " (in which capacity he cer- 
tainly never deserved the qualifying adjective), 
it might be thought that the already-quoted allu- 
sions to Smollett in The Cop ent-Gar den Journal 
were neither very virulent nor very vindictive. 
But such as they were, they stung Smollett to 
madness. On the 20th of January, he rushed 
into the fray with a sixpenny pamphlet, mod- 
elled after Pope's attack on Dennis, and pur- 
was deserved, it is only necessary to read the account of 
Hill's dealings with Christopher Smart {Gentleman^ s 
Magazine^ 1752, pp. 387, 599). A few months after the 
above attack on Fielding, he was publicly caned at Rane- 
lagh by Mr. Mounteford Brown, an Irish gentleman whom 
he had libelled. But he must have been clever, since by 
impudence, cheap science and scandal, he occasionally 
contrived to clear ^^1,500 a year at the pen, in days when 
Fielding and Goldsmith and Johnson remained poor. 



136 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

porting to be A Faithful Narrative of the Base 
and inhuman Arts That were lately practised 
upon the Brain of Habbakkuk Hilding, Justice^ 
Dealer J and Chapman j Who now lies at his House 
in Covent Garden^ in a deplorable State of 
Lunacy J a dreadful Monument of false Friend- 
ship and Delusion, By Drawcansir Alexander ^ 
Fencing-Master and Philomath, Little beyond 
the title-page of this unsavoury performance 
deserves quotation, for it is indescribably coarse 
and hopelessly rancorous ; and indeed is only 
to be explained by its writer's conviction that 
Fielding's ridicule must be stopped at all haz- 
ards, even if it were needful to have recourse 
to that nauseous, and now obsolete, mode of 
warfare described by Commodore Trunnion as 
*' heaving in stink-pots."^ It is also manifest 
from some of its utterances that Smollett, 
rightly or wrongly, regarded Fielding's enter- 
prise as inspired by Lyttelton (c/. the "false 
Friendship " of the title) ; and that he was also 
conceited or foolish enough to believe that 
Fielding's Partridge and Miss Matthews were 
borrowed from his own Strap and Miss Wil- 

1 " For the benefit of the curious," Mr. W. E. Henley 
has reprinted the Faithful Narrative, with a prefatory 
note, at pp. 167-186 of Vol. XII of his complete edition 
Smollett. 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 137 

Hams. To the Smollett pamphlet, as well as to 
some similar and simultaneous attacks upon 
himself and Amelia in a periodical by Bonnel 
Thornton entitled Have at You All; or, The 
Drury Lane Journal, Fielding made no discern- 
ible answer. Already in his fifth issue (Janu- 
ary 1 8th), he had referred generally to ** the 
unfair Methods made use of by the Enemy ; " 
as well as to the impracticability of replying 
effectually with a broadsword to blunderbusses 
loaded with ragged bullets and discharged 
**from lurking Holes and Places of Security." 
With the preceding number the Journal of the 
War had been terminated by the conclusion of 
a peace, and a Court of Censorial Enquiry was 
announced in its place. 

From all this, it must be concluded that, as 
Richardson said, Sir Alexander had been 
** overmatched by people whom he had de- 
spised," and that, when he entered light-heart- 
edly upon the campaign against Dulness under 
the motto Nulla venenato est Litera mista Joco, 
he had not anticipated the kind of treatment he 
received, or had forgotten that the popular reply 
to raillery is abuse. Richardson's words, in- 
deed, are that he had been "overmatched in 
his own way." But this is not the case. His 
way was possibly the coarse way of his period ; 



138 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

but it was not the mean and cowardly way of 
his assailants. It is, however, characteristic of 
his sensitive nature that the first work he 
brought before the new tribunal was his own 
Amelia. He had obviously been greatly an- 
noyed by the malicious capital extracted by the 
critics out of his unlucky neglect to specify 
that Mrs. Booth had been cured of the accident 
recorded in the novel (Bk. II., ch. i.). The 
accident was one which had happened to his 
first wife, whose charms had apparently been 
unimpaired by it ; but he had forgotten to state 
in express terms that the Miss Harris of the 
story was in similar case ; and had thus given 
opportunity to the adversary to mock at his 
heroine as ** a Beauty without a Nose." 
*' Amelia, even to her noselessness, is again his 
first wife" — wrote Richardson to Mrs. Don- 
nellan ; and Johnson also speaks of that "vile 
broken nose, never cured." In the third num- 
ber of The Covent-Garden Journal (and im- 
mediately preceding an announcement of the 
thirteenth elopement from her Lord of Lady 
Vane), Fielding consequently issued a para- 
graph upon the subject: — " It is currently re- 
ported that a famous Surgeon, who absolutely 
cured one Mrs. Amelia Booth, of a violent 
Hurt in her Nose, insomuch, that she had 



The Covenl'Garden Journal, 139 

scarce a Scar left on it, intends to bring Actions 
against several ill-meaning and slanderous 
People, who have reported that the said Lady 
had no Nose, merely because the Author of her 
History, in a Hurry, forgot to inform his Read- 
ers of that Particular . . ." Besides this, 
he made several additions to the book itself 
which left no doubt upon the subject. But he 
was also mortified and depressed by the recep- 
tion which Amelia had received from some of 
those critical irregulars whose activity he had 
deprecated in his third number, especially the 
Beaux and fine Ladies, who — if we may believe 
Mrs. Elizabeth Carter — were unanimous in 
pronouncing the story "to be very sad stuff." ^ 
Accordingly, in Number 7, Amelia is brought 
to the Bar, as indicted upon the Statute of 
Dulness ; and Mr. Counsellor Town enumer- 
ates her Errors. The book is affirmed to be 
"very sad Stuff" (thus corroborating Mrs. 
Carter), and the heroine is described as " alow 
Character," a " Milksop " and " a Fool." She 
is reproached with lack of spirit and too fre- 
quent fainting; with "servile offices," such as 
dressing her children and cooking ; with being 
too forgiving to her husband ; and lastly with 
the results of the mishap already sufficiently re- 

^ Letter Sy 3d Ed. 1819, i. 368. 



140 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

ferred to. Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath 
fare no better ; and finally Mr. Town under- 
takes to prove that the Book. *' contains no Wit, 
Humour, Knowledge of human Nature, or of 
the World; indeed, that the Fable, moral 
Characters, Manners, Sentiments, and Diction, 
are all alike bad and contemptible." After 
some hearsay evidence has been tendered, and 
a "Great Number of Beaus, Rakes, fine 
Ladies, and several formal Persons with bushy 
Wigs, and Canes at their Noses," are preparing 
to supplement it, a grave Man stands up, and 
begging to be heard, delivers what must be re- 
garded as Fielding's final apology for his last 
novel. 

" If you, Mr. Censor, are yourself a Parent, 
you will view me with Compassion when I de- 
clare I am the Father of this poor Girl the 
Prisoner at the Bar ; nay, when I go farther, 
and avow, that of all my Offspring she is my 
favourite Child. I can truly say that I be- 
stowed a more than ordinary Pains in her Edu- 
cation ; in which I will venture to affirm, I fol- 
lowed the Rules of all those who are acknowl- 
edged to have writ best on the Subject ; and if 
her Conduct be fairly examined, she will be 
found to deviate very little from the strictest 
Observation of all those Rules ; neither Homer 



The Copent-Garden Journal. 141 

nor Virgil pursued them with greater Care than 
myself, and the candid and learned Reader will 
see that the latter was the noble model, which 
I made use of on this Occasion. 

*' I do not think my Child is entirely free 
from Faults. I know nothing human that is 
so ; but surely she does not deserve the Ran- 
cour with which she hath been treated by the 
Public. However, it is not my Intention, at 
present, to make any Defence ; but shall sub- 
mit to a Compromise, which hath been always 
allowed in this Court in all Prosecutions for 
Dulness. I do, therefore, solemnly declare to 
you, Mr. Censor, that I will trouble the World 
no more with any Children of mine by the same 
Muse." 

This was recorded by the Censor to the satis- 
faction of the majority. '* Amelia was delivered 
to her Parent, and a Scene of great Tenderness 
passed between them, which gave much Satis- 
faction to many present." But there were 
some, we are told, who regretted this finish to 
the cause, and held that the lady ought to have 
been honourably acquitted. Richardson was 
not one of these, and wrote jubilantly to Mrs. 
Donnellan: *' Mr. Fielding has overwritten 
himself, or rather unde r-wniten ; and in his 
own journal [which R. persists in calling the 



142 Miscellanies i Second Series. 

Common Garden Journal] seems ashamed of his 
last piece ; and has promised that the same 
Muse shall write no more for him. The piece, 
in short, is as dead as if it had been published 
forty years ago, as to sale." Then comes the 
remarkable — " You guess that I have not read 
Amelia. Indeed, I have read but the first 
volume." It was not Amelia, however, of 
whom Fielding was ashamed ; it was the pub- 
lic. Faults of haste and taste he might have 
committed ; but at least he had presented them 
with what Thackeray has called '* the most de- 
lightful portrait of a woman that surely ever was 
painted," and they had preferred the Adven- 
tures of Lady Frail. 

The ** Court of Censorial Enquiry" con- 
tinued to sit after this ; but, as the paper pro- 
gressed, only at rare intervals. One of its 
next duties was to cite the new actor Mossop 
for daring to act Macbeth while Garrick was 
alive, — a case which was decided, and rightly 
decided, in favour of Mossop. Another topic 
dealt with by the Court was the advertisement 
in the guise of a criminal of a whole-length 
print of the notorious Miss Mary or Molly 
Blandy (shortly afterwards executed at Oxford), 
before she had been tried, a course which the 
Court declared to be '* base and infamous" as 



The Coveni-Garden Journal. 143 

tending to ** prepossess the Minds of Men," 
and *' take away that Indifference with which 
Jurymen ought to come to the Trial of a 
Prisoner " — a view which it is difficult to gain- 
say. One of the first books to be examined is 
the philological Hermes of James Harris, a 
second issue of which had appeared in 175 1. 
But Harris, like the first Mrs. Fielding, was 
*'of Salisbury," and was probably known to 
** Mr. Censor," who certainly uses him more 
gently than Johnson, who found bad grammar 
in his Dedication and coxcombry in himself as 
an author.^ A second work, James Gibbs's 
translation of Bishop Osorio's History of the 
Portuguese^ probably owed the notice it re- 
ceived to its dedication to Lyttelton. But 
Fielding seems to have refrained from any 
record of another book inscribed to himself, 
and frequently advertised in the Journal, namely, 
the third edition of Francis Coventry's Pompey 
the Little, concerning which the quidnuncs 

I To quote but one statement from Johnson, is seldom 
safe. Tyers says that the posthumous volumes of Mr. 
Harris of Salisbury had attractions that engaged the great 
man to the end. It was Hermes, by the way, which 
Joseph Cradock's friend took for a novel ; and when he 
returned it, mildly deprecated " these imitations of TriS' 
tram Shandy. ^^ ^ 



144 MiscellanieSy Second Series. 

asserted that its Lady Tempest had her proto- 
type in Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Town- 
shend, who was also suspected by some to have 
sat for the Lady Beilaston of Tom Jones, The 
new issue of Sarah Fielding's David SimpUy 
another frequent appearance, was less in need 
of the Censor's notice, since the volumes 
already included prefaces, avowed and un- 
avowed, from his pen. To his friend Hogarth's 
Analysis of Beauty, which was announced in 
March as a forthcoming Tract in Quarto, he 
might perhaps have been expected to give a 
hearty welcome ; but by the time that much- 
edited masterpiece was published in December, 
The Covent-Garden Journal itself was no more. 
The only literary work belonging strictly to 
1752 which it reviewed, was The Female 
Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, by 
Mrs. Charlotte Lenox, whom Fielding, in his 
later Voyage to Lisbon, describes vaguely as 
*' shamefully distress'd." To posterity, how- 
ever, she must always seem rather fortunate 
than otherwise ; since a lady whose abilities, 
or personal charms, were able to procure for 
her the countenance and assistance of nearly 
all the foremost literary men of her time, can- 
not justly be counted evil-starred. Johnson 
wrote her Prefaces ; Goldsmith, her Epilogues ; 



The Covent-Garden Journal, 14$ 

Garrick helped her to plays (and produced them 
at Drury Lane) ; Richardson read her his 
private letters ; and lastly Fielding, in The 
Covent-Garden Journal for March the 24th, 
after implying that, in some particulars, she had 
outdone Cervantes himself, declared her Ara- 
bella to be "a most extraordinary and most 
excellent Performance." ** It is indeed," he 
went on, **a Work of true Humour, and can- 
not fail of giving a rational, as well as very 
pleasing. Amusement to a sensible Reader, who 
will at once be instructed and very highly 
diverted." Sir Alexander was never slow at 
''backing of his friends." Only a week or 
two before, he had added to a notification in 
the Journal of Mrs. Clive's benefit, the follow- 
ing — " Mrs. Clive in her Walk on the Stage is 
the greatest Actress the World ever saw ; and 
if as many really understood true Humour as 
pretend to understand it, she would have noth- 
ing to wish, but that the House was six Times 
as large as it is." It is pleasant to think that 
he could still write thus of the accomplished 
comedian, of whom, eighteen years before, he 
had said in the epistle prefixed to The Intriguing 
Chambermaid, that her part in real life was that 
of ^'the best Wife, the best Daughter, the best 
Sister, and the best Friend." 



146 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

The laurels of Fielding were not won as a 
periodical writer; and it is idle to seek in The 
Covent-Garden Journal of his decline for qual- 
ities which were absent from The Champion 
and The True Patriot. Hill's verdict on his 
work as an essayist is, of course, simply im- 
pertinent ; but one of his best critics has also 
admitted of these particular papers that " few 
are marked by talent and not one by genius." 
It is possible, indeed, that they are not all from 
his pen, as they frequently bear different 
initials ; and it may well be that some of them 
should have been signed Lyttelton or Murphy. 
Many, however, may be certainly attributed to 
Fielding, e. g., the one containing the " Modern 
Glossary," which defines the word '' Great " to 
signify Bigness, when applied to a Thing, and 
often Littleness, or Meanness, when applied to 
a Man, — a distinction which has the very ring 
of Jonathan Wild ; and the two papers devoted 
to ridiculing the proceedings of the Robin 
Hood Society in Essex Street, to which in- 
stitution he subsequently referred in the Voyage 
to Lisbon. This freethinking club was never- 
theless a nursery of rhetoric, in which even 
Burke is supposed to have exercised his powers ; 
and its president, a very dignified baker (whom 
Derrick said ought to have been Master of the 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 147 

Rolls), was undoubtedly a born orator to boot. 
One of the subsequent papers tells the story of 
Jucundo from Ariosto's Orlando in the prose 
fashion afterwards employed by Leigh Hunt in 
The Indicator; and there are lucubrations upon 
People of Fashion, Humour, Contempt, Pro- 
fanity and so forth, besides a very sensible and 
pleasant Dialogue at Tunbridge Wells, ''after 
the Manner of Plato," between a Fine Lady 
and a Philosopher, which, however, bears the 
initial "J." But Fielding is clearly responsible 
for the succeeding number, a skit upon the per- 
verse ingenuities of Shakespearean emendation. 

To the student, The Covent-Garden Journal 
must always be interesting for its references, 
direct and indirect, to its responsible author, 
now a broken, over-burdened man, nearing the 
close of his career. Some of these references, 
hitherto only reported imperfectly from The 
Gentleman's Magazine and elsewhere, have 
already been dealt with at the outset of this 
paper. A few others may find a place here. 
Foremost comes the constantly recurring noti- 
fication, which shows how little he regarded his 
office from the point of view of his own Justice 
Thrasher : — 

"All Persons who shall for the Future 
suff'er by Robbers, Burglars, etc., are desired 



148 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

immediately to bring, or send, the best Descrip- 
tion they can of such Robbers, etc., with the 
Time and Place, and Circumstances of the 
Fact, to Henry Fielding, Esq., at his House 
in Bow-Street." 

Another instance of his energy in his calling 
is supplied by the collection of cases which, 
under the title of Examples of the Interposition 
of Providence, in the Detection and Punishment 
of Murder, he threw into pamphlet form in 
April, 1752, and which was prompted, as the 
Advertisement puts it, *' by the many horrid 
Murders committed within this last Year." 
Copies of the Examples were freely distributed 
in Court to those to whom they seemed likely 
to be of use. A notice of the arrival at the 
Register Office of a consignment of Glaston- 
bury Water is proof that Fielding retained his 
faith in the healing virtues of that '* salubrious 
Spring " ; while the announcement of a new 
translation of Lucian in collaboration with 
William Young (" Parson Adams ") testifies to 
the fact that he still hankered after his old 
literary pursuits. To this last never-executed 
project the Journal devoted a leading article, 
which is interesting from its incidental admis- 
sion that Lucian had been Fielding's own mas- 
ter in style. It further declared that the then- 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 149 

existing English versions of the Samosatene 
gave no better idea of his spirit '* than the 
vilest Imitation by a Sign-post Painter can con- 
vey the Spirit of the excellent Hogarth," — an- 
other instance of Fielding's fidelity to the 
friend he had praised in the Preface to Joseph 
Andrews. The article ends by trusting the 
Public will support two gentlemen, "who have 
hitherto in their several Capacities endeavoured 
to be serviceable to them, without deriving any 
great Emolument to themselves from their 
Labours." In the next number (for July 4th) 
there is a hint of Sir Alexander's retirement, 
which was compromised by changing the 
Journal from a bi-weekly to a weekly organ. 
In that form it continued to appear until No- 
vember 2^th, when Fielding definitely took 
leave of his readers in the tone of a sad and 
weary man. He begged the Public that hence- 
forth they would not father upon him the dul- 
ness and scurrility of his worthy contempo- 
raries, "since I solemnly declare that unless in 
revising my former Works, I have at present no 
Intention to hold any further Correspondence 
with the gayer Muses." Such engagements 
are not unfrequently made in moments of ill- 
health or depression ; but in this case the 
promise was kept. The world would be poorer 



1^0 Miscellanies, Second Series, 

without the posthumous tract which tells the 
touching story of Fielding's Voyage to Lisbon, 
and, practically, of his remaining years ; but, 
unapproached as is that record for patient 
serenity and cheerful courage, the gayer Muses 
cannot justly be said to have had anything to do 
with its production. 

Only a limited selection of the essays in The 
Covent-Garden Journal is included in Andrew 
Millar's edition of Fielding's works. Sets of 
the original numbers, including the advertise- 
ments, etc., are exceedingly rare, and generally 
incomplete. By way of postscript to this 
paper we cull a few dispersed items from the 
chronicle entitled *' Modern History." Rob- 
beries on the highway are of course as *' plenty 
as blackberries " ; but the following extract 
suggests a picture by Mr. Waller or Mr. Dendy 
Sadler :— 

'* A few Days since [this was in January, 
17^2], as two Gentlemen of the Army, and 
two Ladies, were coming from Bath to London, 
in a returned Coach, they were stopped at the 
Entrance of a Lane by a Labourer from out of 
a Field, who told them there were two High- 
waymen in the Lane, whose Persons and 
Horses he described : Upon which the Gentle- 



The Covent'Garden Journal. 151 

men got out of the Coach, and walked, one on 
each Side of it, with Pistols in their Hands. 
One of the Ladies, seeing the Gentlemen's 
Swords in the Coach, said she would not stay 
in it, but took one and walked by the Side of 
the Gentlemen ; and, encouraged by her Ex- 
ample, the other Lady did so, by the other 
Gentleman. Thus armed, they went down 
the Lane, where they met the Highway- 
men, who passed them without the least 
Molestation." 

These incidents, however, were not always 
picturesque : — 

*' Wednesday Night [January i^th], Mr, 
George Gary, a Higgler, who lived near Epp- 
ing, on his Return home from Leadenhall- 
market;, was robbed and murdered by three 
Footpads near the Windmill, which is within 
half a Mile of his own House : They like- 
wise shot his Son, who was in the Cart with 
him, but his Wound is not likely to prove 
mortal. Mr. Gary was an honest, industrious 
Man, and has left a Wife and five Children." 

In his Enquiry into the Causes of the late In- 
crease of Robbers, Fielding had advocated 
private executions in preference to the degra- 
ding " Tyburn holidays " of his age. He often 
returns to the subject in The Covent-Garden 



1^2 Miscellanies y Second Series, 

Journalj witness the following under date of 
April 27th : — 

*'This Day five Malefactors were executed 
at Tyburn. No Heroes within the Memory of 
Man ever met their Fate with more Boldness 
and Intrepidity, and consequently with more 
felonious Glory." 

Again,— 

*'On Monday last [July 13th] eleven 
Wretches were executed at Tyburn, and the 
very next Night one of the most impudent 
Street-Robberies was committed near St. 
James's Square ; an Instance of the little Force 
which such Examples have on the Minds of the 
Populace." 

Elsewhere he says (March 27th), concluding 
an account which might well be a comment on 
the last plate but one of Hogarth's Apprentice 
series : — 

** The real Fact at present is, that instead of 
making the Gallows an Object of Terror, our 
Executions contribute to make it an Object of 
Contempt in the Eye of a Malefactor ; and we 
sacrifice the Lives of Men, not for [the italics 
are Fielding's] the Reformation^ hut the 
Diversion of the Populace."" 

Here is a note to Mr. H artshorne's //a/i^m^ 
in Chains : — 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 153 

** On Saturday Morning [June 6th] early the 
Gibbet on Stamford-Hill Common, on which 
Hurlock hung in Chains for the Murder of his 
Bedfellow, a few Years since in the Minories, 
was cut down, and the Remains of Hurlock 
carried off." 

The next is a smuggling episode : — 

'* [Mo72ia/, September nth] Last Week a 
Riding Officer, with the Assistance of some 
Dragoons, seized upwards of 300 Weight of 
Tea and some Brandy (which were lodged in 
an old House) near Goodhurst in Sussex, and 
conveyed it to the Custom-house." 

In Fielding's century John Broughton (be- 
loved of Borrow I), Jack Slack and Tom Faulke- 
ner, were familiar pugilistic names. At this 
time, Broughton, ** the unconquered," had been 
badly beaten by Slack, and his patron, the 
Duke of Cumberland, who had made him a 
Yeoman of the Guard, was said to have lost 
some ;f 10,000 by his defeat. 

"Yesterday [May 13th] at Broughton*s Am- 
phitheatre [in Han way Street, Oxford Street], 
the Odds on mounting the Stage were two to 
one against Falkener. About the Middle of 
the Battle the Odds run against Slack. But 
the brave Butcher [Slack], after a severe Con- 
test of 27 Minutes and a Half, left his Antago- 



i^ Miscellanies J Second Series, 

nist prostrate on the Stage, deprived of Sight and 
in a most miserable Condition. As the House 
was crouded and Prices were very high, it is 
computed that there was not less taken than 
300/." 

The unhappy woman referred to in the en- 
suing quotation has already been mentioned in 
the course of this paper. It is only fair to add 
that she died denying the crime with which she 
was charged : — 

** On Tuesday Morning [March 3d] about 
8 o'clock, Miss Mary Blandy was put to the 
Bar at the Assizes at Oxford, Mr. Baron Legge 
and Mr. Baron Smythe being both on the 
Bench, and tried on an Indictment for poison- 
ing her late Father, Mr. Francis Blandy, 
Town Clerk of Henly upon Thames ; and 
after a Trial, which lasted till half an Hour after 
Eight in the Evening, she was found guilty on 
very full Evidence, and received Sentence to 
be hanged." 

She was executed on the Castle green at 
Oxford on Monday, April 6th, in the presence 
of about 5,000 spectators, " many of whom, 
and particularly several gentlemen of the uni- 
versity, shed tears," says Sylvanus Urban. 
Gibbon, who had just come to Oxford, may 
have witnessed this occurrence. 



The Covent-Garden Journal. 155 

" Yesterday [November 9th] a Boy climbed 
up to the Top of the Door of Westminster-hall, 
in order to see the Lord-Mayor pass by, and 
missing his hold fell down, and was so much 
wounded by the Fall and trod under Foot, be- 
fore he was got out of the Crowd, that it is 
thought he cannot live." 

The Lord Mayor in this instance was the 
Crispe Gascoyne who, in the following year, 
took part against Fielding over the case of 
Elizabeth Canning. Here is a reference to 
another " person of importance in his Day " : — 

^^ Bath, Aug, 24th . . . Last Monday 
a very curious Statue, in white Marble, of 
Richard Nash, Esq.; done by Mr. Prince 
Hoare, was erected in the Pump-Room of this 
City. The Expence is defrayed by several of 
the principal Inhabitants of this Place, out of 
Gratitude for his well-known prudent Manage- 
ment for above forty Years, with Regard to the 
Regulations of the Diversions, the Accommo- 
dation of Persons resorting hither, and the gen- 
eral Good of the City." 

Was it not Balzac who wrote Oil m^nent les 
Mauvais Chemins I Here, finally, is the epitaph 
of that "Charming Betty Careless" whose 
name figures both in Amelia and in the terrible 
Bedlam scene of The Rake's Progress : — 



1^6 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

** On Wednesday Evening [April 2 2d] last 
was buried from the Parish-House of Covent- 
Garden, Mrs. Careless, well known for many 
Years by the Name of Beity Careless , by the 
gay Gentlemen of the Town, of whose Money 
she had been the Occasion (as it is said) of 
spending upward of fifty thousand Pounds, tho' 
at last reduced to receive Alms from the Parish. 
Almost a certain Consequence attending Ladies 
in her unhappy Cast of Life." 



ON CERTAIN QUOTATIONS IN WAL- 
TON'S ** ANGLER." 

THE Compleat Angler, says that accom- 
plished fisherman and poet, the late 
Thomas Westwood,^ *' is essentially a book to 
be loved, and to be discoursed of lovingly." 
Speech censorious or pedantic of Izaak Walton 
would be as ungrateful as to speak pedantically 
or censoriously of that other revered author, 
Charles Lamb, under whose roof Mr. West- 
wood, as a small boy, first made acquaintance 
with what he terms *' England's one perfect 
Pastoral." It was a battered copy of Hawkin's 
issue of 1760, picked up among the rubbish of 
a marine store, and concerning which, shaded 
by an ancient apple-tree in the "little over- 
grown orchard" at Enfield, St. Charles would 

1 It seems but yesterday (1888) that Thomas Westwood 
died, and (since he has no niche in the Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography') entered into " the portion of weeds and 
outworn faces." But the author of The Quest of the Sanc- 
greall deserves to be remembered (with Hawker of Mor- 
wenstow) by all good Arthurians, as the author of The 
Chronicle of the " Compleat Angler " deserves to be re- 
membered by all good fishermen. 
157 



1^8 Miscellanies i Second Series. 

hold forth to his young friend. Though no 
fisherman, Lamb, as we know, loved his Angler. 
^' It would sweeten a man's temper at any time to 
read it," he wrote to Coleridge ; and Westwood 
tells us that the Enfield sitting-room was deco- 
rated by copies of Wale's designs to the book, 
which Emma Isola (Procter's *Msola Bella 
whom the poets love") had executed for the 
delectation of her adopted father. Where are 
those precious relics now, and what would they 
fetch at Christie's 1 

But though it is pleasant to connect Lamb 
and Walton, our present concern is with Walton 
alone, and more especially with the unconven- 
tional method of quotation which he frequently 
adopts. An immediate example will be better 
than an exordium. In his opening chapter, he 
professes to reproduce a passage from Mon- 
taigne ; and in his first edition of 1653, he 
gives its source in the margin of the page : — 
" The Lord Montague in his Apol [ogie] for 
Ra [ymond] Sebond." Here is the passage, as 
he finally revised and readjusted it at pp. 5, 6 of 
his fifth impression of 1676. " When my Cat 
and I entertain each other with mutual apish 
tricks (as playing with a garter') who knows but 
that I make my Cat more sport than she makes 
me ? shall I conclude her to be simple, that has 



On Quotations in Walton^ s ^^ Angler.'' !<,<) 

her time to begin or refuse to play as freely as 
I myself have ? Nay, who knowes but that it 
is a defect of my not understanding her lan- 
guage (for doubtless Cats talk and reason with 
one another) that we agree no better : and who 
knows but that she pitties me for being no wiser, 
than to play with her, and laughs and censures 
my follie, for making sport for her, when we 
too play together?" ''Thus freely speaks 
Mountaigne concerning Cats," — says honest 
Izaak, concluding his quotation ; but the free- 
dom is not Montaigne's. For when we com- 
pare the original French (Didot's ed. 1859, p. 
226), what we find is this : — " Quand ie me joue 
^ ma chatte, qui s^ait si elle passe son temps de 
moy, plus que ie ne fois d'elle ? nous nous en- 
tretenons de singeries reciproques : si i'ay mon 
heure de commencer on de refuser, aussi a elle 
la sienne." In Florio's version of 1603, this is 
thus rendered, "When I am playing with my 
Cat, who knowes whether she have more sport 
in dallying with me, than I have in gaming with 
her ? We entertaine one another with mutuall 
apish trickes. If I have my houre to begin or 
to refuse, so hath she hers." Now where did 
Walton get his version? Obviously he had 
seen Florio, witness the " entertain each other 
with mutual apish tricks." But there is no 



i6o Miscellanies y Second Series. 

garter, either in the original or in *' Resolute 
John." Unless, therefore, we are to suppose 
that Walton, like Lord St. Alban, garbled his 
quotations, we are reduced to the conclusion 
that he must have written from memory and ex- 
panded unconsciously. Yet he prints the pas- 
sage in inverted commas, as if it were textual.^ 
Bacon not only garbled his quotations ; but 
he, too, misrepresented Montaigne. '* Moun- 
taigny saith prettily," he writes in his Essay 
*^Of Truth," whereas Montaigne expressly 
tells us that he is quoting " un ancient' — as a 
matter of fact, Plutarch. Bacon's biographer, 
Dr. Rawley, extenuates the garbling, like the 
loyal biographer he was. *Mf he [Bacon] had 
occasion to repeat another man's words after 
him, he had an use and faculty to dress them in 
better vestments and apparel than they had be- 
fore: so that the author should find his own 
speech much amended and yet the substance of 
it still retained." This may perhaps be the de- 

1 This passage in Montaigne seems also to have found 
its way into the vast drag-net of Butler : 
" For 't has been held by many, that 
As Montaigne playing with his Cat, 
Complains she thought him but an Ass, 
Much more she would Sit Hudibras,'^ etc. 

Hudibrasy Part I, canto i, 11 37-40. 



On Quotations n Walton's '^Angler.'' i6i 

fence of our next citation from the Compleat 
Angler. At the end of an Address ''to the 
Honest and Judicious Reader" in Francis 
Hickes's Select Dialogues of Lucian, Oxford, 
1634, 4to, is an epigram in Greek and English 
signed " T. H.," i.e., Thomas Hickes, the 
translator's son and publisher. The English 
runs as follows, and is headed, " Lucian upon 
his booke : " 

Lucian well skill'd in old toyes this has writ : 
For all's but folly that men thinke is wit : 
No settled judgement doth in men appeare ; 
But thou admirest that which others jeere. 

In Walton's first chapter, just after the Mon- 
taigne passage in the first edition, but preceding 
it in the fifth, he prints an epigram which he 
says is to be found " fix'd before the Dialogues 
of Lucian.'" ** I have taken a little pleasant 
pains [he continues] to make such a conversion 
of it as may make it the fitter for all of that 
Fraternity"^ (i. e., of Scoffers): 

Lucian well skill'd in scoffing, this hath writ 
Friend, that's your folly which you think your wit : 
This you vent oft, void both of wit zx^^fear^ 
Meaning another, when yourself you jeer. 

1 This admission is omitted in the fifth edition of 1676. 



1 62 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

That is to say, he has given it an entirely differ- 
ent turn. It may well be, however, that Wal- 
ton's views of the sanctity of his text were less 
stringent than ours. A few pages further on 
he quotes from Herbert's Temple. Out of the 
long poem entitled Providence he takes verses 
36, 8 and 7, and prints them in that order to 
make a *' sweet conclusion" to his discourse, 
altering a word at the beginning for the sake of 
symmetry. This is not much, for, in another 
place, in Chapter XVI, where he cannot re- 
member, he improvises. In Piscator's song, 
*'Oh the gallant Fisher's life," which, in the 
fifth edition, is attributed to Chalkhill, he makes 
the singer say that, " having forgotten a part of 
it, I was forced to patch it up by the help of my 
own Invention, who am not excellent at Poetrie, 
as my part of the song may testifie." He was 
more excellent than he knew, witness his 
"composure" in Chapter V of The Angler's 
Wish, with its pretty reference to his second 
wife. and his dog Bryan. 

Let us turn now to Walton's treatment of 
Bacon, to whose Natural History and History 
of Life and Death he makes several references. 
He says twice that Sir Francis Bacon (as he 
uniformly calls him) puts the age of a Salmon at 
not above ten years. Bacon, in his History of 



On Quotations in Walton's ^^ Angler/' 163 

Life and Death (Rawley's version), 1650, p. 11, 
s. 46, certainly says this of the " Carp, Breame, 
Tench, Eele, and the like," but not of the 
Salmon. In his other references to the History 
of Life and Death, however, Walton is practi- 
cally accurate. But in a passage professing to 
come from the Naturall History^ it is again 
necessary to cross-question his quotation. 
Speaking of water in Chapter V he says that 
*'Sir Francis Bacon, in the Eighth Century of 
his Naturalt History,'' " there proves that waters 
may be the medium of sounds by demonstra- 
ting it thus : * That if you knock two stones 
together very deep under the water, those that 
stand on a bank near to that place may hear the 
noise without any diminution of it by the water.' 
He also offers the like experiment concerning 
the letting an anchor fall, by a very long cable 
or rope, on a rock, or the sand, within the sea." 
The raw material of this is undoubtedly to be 
found in Bacon's Eighth Century, Ex. 792 
(which Walton gives in the margin) ; but to repre- 
sent the statement so specifically cited, there is 
nothing save — '' If you dash a Stone against a 
Stone in the Bottome of the Water, it maketh a 
Sound." Perhaps this informality of repetition 
is part of that unbraced " picture of his disposi- 
tion," — to which he refers in his Address to the 



164 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Reader, — " in such days and times as I have 
laid aside business, and gone a-fishing." 

There is, of course, another, and a not un- 
reasonable solution of these things, namely, that 
Walton may have obtained his information by 
word of mouth from friends who did not, and 
perhaps did not pretend to speak with absolute 
accuracy. In his first chapter he says distinctly 
that Piscator's " philosophical discourse " is 
most of it derived from a recent conference 
with his friend, the famous anatomist and 
Gresham professor, Dr. Thomas Warton ; and 
in a subsequent chapter (the nineteenth) where 
he gives an account of a " strange fish," he intro- 
duces what he has to tell by admitting that he 
has *' been beholding " to his learned friend 
*' for many of the choicest observations that he 
has imparted " to his scholar. It is to be ob- 
served, too, in this instance, that though he ap- 
parently received his data orally, he prints the 
passage in italics, like a textual quotation. 
This system of instruction by conference would 
explain many things which otherwise are diffi- 
cult to understand, as, for example, the refer- 
ence in Chapter I to the Voyages of Mendez 
Pinto, with their mention of "a king and 
several priests a-fishing." Those who take the 
trouble to look up Chapter LXXIX of Henry 



On Quotations in Walton's ^^ Angler.'' 165 

Cogan's folio version of 1653, to which Walton's 
editors direct him, will discover with surprise 
that the only discernible passage on the subject 
is a detailed account of the baiting by the King of 
Bungo of a huge Whale which he has *' cooped 
up in a channel," and that of clerical Brothers 
of the Angle there is never a word. It is clear 
that Walton could not have seen his authority 
if Major's reference be correct. When he has 
seen his authority, he is usually precise enough. 
For example, he had evidently consulted the 
Travels of George Sandys, the translator of 
Ovid, for though he professes to quote from 
memory, he quotes accurately. He was also 
experimentally familiar with that curious old 
book. Dr. George Hakewill's Apologie or 
Declaration of the Power and Providence of God 
in the Government of the World, Printed for 
Robert Allott, at the Beare in Paules Church- 
yard, 1630. From Hakewill, who was Arch- 
deacon of Surrey, and to whom Boswell gives 
the credit of helping to form the style of John- 
son, Walton probably got his information as to 
Macrobius and Varro, the Roman aviaries, the 
Roman fish-ponds, the serving-in of fish with 
music, the account from Seneca of the dying 
mullet, and the story of the lamprey that was 
mourned by Hortensius the orator, — although 



1 66 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

in this last case, Walton, while citing Hakewill 
as his authority, adds, after his fashion, a detail 
which Hakewill does not give, inasmuch as he 
says that Hortensius had kept the lamprey long. 
Another work to which Walton seems to have 
had actual access is the Rev. Edward Topsell's 
Historic of Fowre-footed Beasts, 1607. From 
Topsell he takes much of his description of the 
Otter at the beginning of his second chapter, 
and his easy method of borrowing has apparently 
been the means of burdening the language with 
a needless word. Topsell writes (p. 574) of a 
*' kind of Assa called Benioyn," the smell of 
which drives away the Otter. The fragrant 
resin or gum intended is obviously that obtained 
from the Styrax benzoin of Sumatra and Java, 
popularly known as '* benjamin." But under 
Walton's transforming pen, it becomes the 
** herb [?] Benione,''' and Benione as an obso- 
lete form of benzoin, forthwith takes its place in 
the New English Dictionary, with the sentence 
from the Compleat Angler for its pidce justifica- 
tive. 

One more illustration of the Waltonian 
method. In the fifth chapter of his fifth edition, 
p. no, he represents the " devout Lessius " as 
saying — " That poor men, and those that fast 
often, have much more pleasure in eating than 



On Quotations in Walton's ^'Angler.''' 167 

rich men and gluttons, that always feed before 
their stomachs are empty of their last meat, and 
call for more : for by that means they rob them- 
selves of that pleasure that hunger brings to 
poor men." The Lessius referred to is Leonard 
Lessio or Lessius, sometime Professor of 
Divinity and Philosophy at the Jesuits' College 
of Louvain, whose Hygiasticon, seu vera Ratio 
Valetudinis bonce et Vitce was published at 
Antwerp in 161 3, a second edition following in 
1614. In 1634 it was translated into English 
by Timothy Smith, with the sub-title, The 
right course of preserving Life and Health unto 
extream old Age ; and to Smith's version, as to 
the tract of Lessius, was added a rendering of 
Lewis Cornaro's Treatise of Temperance. 
Lessius had made his own translation into Latin 
from Cornaro's Italian ; Smith's English version 
was by George Herbert. It is probable that, 
as Walton's editors suppose, this tiny i2mo, 
issued from Cambridge in the same year as the 
Select Dialogues of Lucian was issued at Oxford, 
must have been known to Walton. As far as 
we can ascertain, however, neither in Lessius 
nor Cornaro is there any passage corresponding 
to the above, although it may fairly be described 
as an inference from the teaching of both. And 
it is in italic type, just like Wharton's descrip- 



1 68 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

tion, already mentioned, of the *' strange 
fish." 

It would no doubt be easy to give farther 
specimens of Walton's treatment of Sylvester's 
Du Bartas, of Peter Heylin, of Dubravius, 
M^ric Casaubon, Cardanus, Paulus Jovius, and 
the rest of the worthies whose *' highly re- 
spectable names" add weight to his pages. 
But what has been noted will suffice. The 
scantlings of learning with which he sought to 
dignify his book are no essential part of it ; and 
this desultory inquiry has certainly not been 
undertaken in the spirit or the interest of those 
** severe, sowre complexion'd " critics whom 
Walton, in his Address to the Reader, disallows 
to be competent judges of his performance. 
What we want most, no less, from this delight- 
ful author, is himself, not the " scattered 
sapience" derived at second hand and super- 
ficially from Dr. Wharton of Gresham College, 
or Dr. Sheldon of All Soul's, but the '* right," 
neat, and unsophisticated Walton who *' babbles 
of green fields," gossips of the haycocks and 
the soft May-rain, or copies down the ditty that 
Maudlin the milkmaid ** sung last night, when 
young Corydon the Shepherd plaid so purely on 
his oaten pipe to her and her cozen Betty." It 
is this Walton we must have, — the Walton of 



On Quotations in Walton s ^^ Angler.'' 169 

the cheerful spirit and the clean morality, — of 
the frank old words that smell of the soil and 
the fresh-turned furrows. Rondeletius and 
Salvian and Aldrovandus and Gasper Peucerus 
no doubt served to astonish and impress *' honest 
Nat. and R. Roe" while they waited in the 
parlour of the Thatched House at Hoddesdon, 
or the George at Ware, for the twenty-two inch 
trout whose belly, when taken, was " part of it 
as yellow as a marigold, and part of it as white 
as a lilly." But we — we prefer to sit with 
Father Izaak outside in the sweetbriar Arbour, 
discussing a bottle of the " Sack, Milk, 
Oranges and Sugar, which all put together, make 
a drink like Nectar ; " or to hear him repeat — 
probably with variations of his own — some 
sample of choicely good Verses made by that ex- 
cellent Poet and Lover of Angling (now with 
God), Sir Henry Wotton, once Provost of 
Eton College. 



''VADER CATS" 

TO an uninstructed reader the homely name 
that heads this paper does not, in itself, 
suggest any special distinction. When we are 
informed that Jacob Cats was a native of 
Holland, our first impression is of some typical 
Dutchman, squat-figured and stolid, preoccupied 
with a pipe and tulips. If it be added that he 
wrote verses, speculation goes no farther than 
to conceive a minstrel of the type of Long- 
fellow's " Cobbler of Hagenau," chirruping his 
songs at his work-bench, and having ever 

'* at his side. 
Among his leathers and his tools, 
Reynard the Fox, the Ship of Fools, 
Or Eulenspiegel, open wide." 

Each of these forecasts, however, is equally 
at fault. As a Dutchman, Jacob Cats was one 
of the prominent men of his age. He had 
gained honour as a Greek Scholar at Leyden 
University; he had travelled in France and 
England, visiting both Oxford and Cambridge. 
He was an accomplished jurist ; and though — 
170 



^^Vader Cats.'' 171 

as some authorities allege — he had but little 
success as a politician, he was, at all events, a 
great civic dignitary in the great days of the 
Netherlands, holding important office as a 
magistrate at Middleburgh and Dordrecht, and 
ultimately proceeding Grand Pensionary of 
Holland. He was twice Ambassador to 
England, being knighted on the first occasion 
by Charles I. When finally, at the age of 
seventy-two, he obtained the permission of the 
States to retire into private life at his country- 
seat of Sorgh-vliet — his ''Sans-Souci " or 
** Castle-Careless" — on the Scheveningen 
Road, it was as a man who on the whole had 
deserved well of his generation, and might 
fairly be permitted to " cultivate his garden," 
and write his " Reminiscences." 

But if he acquired a reputation as a citizen, 
he earned a still greater reputation as a poet. 
He was a contemporary of Hooft and Vondel, 
and that delightful Tesselschade Visscher, of 
whom Mr. Edmund Gosse has given us so 
pleasant a portrait ; ^ and he was probably the 
most popular of the four. By his readers he 
was affectionately styled " Vader Cats"; and 

1 Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe, 1879^ 
pp. 230-277. 



172 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

his collected works in familiar moments were 
known as the *' Household Bible." His big 
folio was to be found by poor men's hearths, 
and in the windows of the rich — even as Baker's 
"Chronicle" lay in the windows of Sir Roger 
de Coverley. When now we open the vast 
volume (i. e., Jan Jacobz Schipper's Amsterdam 
edition of 1655), its bulk appals us. It is a 
book to be approached only from the side of 
dimension. It is so high : it measures so much 
about. Not to lay stress on the blackness of 
the type, which is in itself portentous, it is 
printed in two columns, — sometimes even in 
three. Turning the tall pages timidly, you be- 
come conscious, in addition to a Babel of prov- 
erbs and emblems in all languages, of a long 
didactic poem on "Marriage" (Houwelick), 
which traces that institution, with abundant 
illustration, from maidenhood to widowhood. 
Then of another, and a still longer effort, en- 
titled *' Nuptial Ring" (Trou-rin§;h)f wherein 
it is treated, amongst other things, of Crates and 
Hipparchia, of Adam and Eve, of Masinissa 
and Sophonisba, of Eginhard and the daughter 
of Charlemagne, of Jacob and Rachel. (Jacob, 
it may be noted in parenthesis, has apparently 
been educated in France, for in the picture he 
has carved "la belle Rachell" upon a tree- 



^'Vader Cats.'' 173 

trunk, and written under it " Vive TAmour"). 
Then there is a " pastoral romance " of " Gala- 
tea"; a poem on '' Country- Life" (Buyten- 
leven), in the frontispiece of which is a view of 
Sorgh-vliet, and towards the end of the book, 
another series of poems called cheerfully ^' Cof- 
fins for the Living " (Doodt-Kiste poor de Leven- 
dige). These are only part of the contents. 
Beside and between them are numerous other 
pieces, accompanied like the rest by prefaces 
and sub-prefaces, by appendices, excursuses, 
commentaries, head-notes, shoulder-notes, side- 
notes, foot-notes, postscripts, and addresses to 
the Lector benignus (^^ goetgunstige Leser") 
which hedge them in on all sides. Poetry, 
with this Dutch poet, is not by any means a 
trickling rill from Helicon ; it is an inundation 
d la mode du pays, — a flood in a flat land, cover- 
ing everything far and near with its sluggish 
waters. 

To this immoderate and incontinent effusive- 
ness is probably to be attributed the fact that, 
notwithstanding their excellent precepts and 
praiseworthy morality, the poems of Jacob Cats 
do not seem to have largely attracted the trans- 
lator. Report, indeed, affirms that his entire 
works have been "done into German"; but 
this would be of little service to the ordinary 



174 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

English reader. The French, on the other 
hand, have contented themselves with an imita- 
tion of the short piece entitled "Children's 
Games" (Kinder-Spel). In our own country, 
multifarious old Thomas Heywood, the drama- 
tist, paraphrased the first part of Houwelick 
under the title of " An Emblematicall Dialogue, 
interpreted from the excellent and most learned 
D. Jac. Cat\ius; which showeth how Virgins 
in their chaste loves ought to bear themselves." 
And as late as i860 many of the emblems and 
proverbs were translated by Richard Pigot to 
accompany the "freely-rendered" cuts of John 
Leighton. But our concern here is less with 
the text than with the old copper-plates which 
originally accompanied it, and which, fortu- 
nately for us, speak a universal language. 

These, printed in the body of the page, are 
generally uniform in size, and surrounded by a 
conventional border. Many of them bear the 
initials or names of such well-known engravers 
as Hondius, the two Mathams, and Crispin van 
Queborn. But the main interest centres in the 
chief designer, Adrian van der Venne, a painter 
of considerable ability, and noted especially for 
the prodigious canvases on which, like the 
Frenchman Lebrun, he depicted the battles of 
the seventeenth century. After drifting to and 



''Vader Cats.'" i75 

fro, he seems to have settled at Middleburgh, 
where Cats also resided from 1602 to 1620. 
His brother, Jan Pietersz van der Venne, v^^as 
a bookseller and publisher of the town, and for 
him he executed numberless book-illustrations 
in addition to those now under consideration. 
He is said also to have possessed no mean 
literary talent, and to have written satirical 
works. It is probably a natural consequence 
of his modus operandi that he should reproduce 
his environment ; and many views and memories 
of the capital of Zeeland and the surrounding 
country are traceable in his compositions. Per- 
haps the most interesting of these is to be found 
in the large head-piece to the above-mentioned 
"Children's Games," the background of which 
exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, with 
its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees. 
This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any 
in the gallery. Down the middle of the fore- 
ground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, 
advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, march- 
ing to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating 
captain of fifteen. Around this central group 
are dispersed knots of children, playing leap- 
frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, whipping 
tops, walking on stilts, skipping and the like. 
In one corner the boys are busy with blind 



176 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

man's buff ; in the other the girls, with their 
stiff head-dresses and vandyked aprons, are oc- 
cupied with their dolls. Under the pump some 
seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-far- 
thing seems to be going on vigorously ; and, not 
to be behindhand in the fun, two little fellows 
in the distance are standing upon their heads. 
The whole composition is full of life and move- 
ment, and — so conservative is childhood — 
might, but for the costume and scene, represent 
a playground of to-day. No doubt it repre- 
sented, with far closer fidelity, the playground 
of the artist's time. 

It is this note of literalness — this truth to 
what lay nearest — that constitutes the chief 
charm of these illustrations. Many of those to 
the " Emblems " are quaint with that inventive 
strangeness and naive ingenuity which have a 
fascination apart from technical merit. But, as 
a rule, the artist is strongest in what he has 
seen. His lions are more or less heraldic ; his 
crocodiles are badly stuffed ; and his sala- 
manders of doubtful actuality. There is no 
such faltering when he shows us a hammer 
striking a flint on a cushion, or a pair of snuffers 
cropping a candle, or the interior of a black- 
smith's shop. What applies to the still-life ap- 
plies equally to the figures. When the subject 



** Vader Cats," 177 

is a tailor sitting cross-legged in his stall, or a 
woman warming her feet and gazing into the 
embers, there is no doubt of the reality of the 
studies. Some of them, indeed, are finished 
works in genre. 

What would one not give for such an illus- 
trated copy of Shakespeare 1 In these pages of 
Jacob Cats we have the authentic Holland of 
the seventeenth century : — its vanes and spires 
and steep-roofed houses ; its gardens with their 
geometric tulip-beds, their formally-clipped 
alleys and arches, their shining parallelograms 
of water. Here are its old-fashioned interiors, 
with the deep fireplaces and queer andirons, the 
huge four-posters, the prim portraits on the 
wall, the great brass-clamped coffers and carved 
armoires for the ruffs and starched collars and 
stiff farthingales of the women. In one picture 
you may see the careful housewife mournfully 
inspecting a moth-eaten garment which she has 
just taken from a chest that Wardour Street 
might envy; in another she is energetically 
cuffing the ** foolish fat scullion," who has let 
the spotted coach-dog overturn the cauldron at 
the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles 
on, is cautiously probing the contents of the 
said cauldron with a fork ; here the mistress of 
the house is peeling pears ; here the plump and 



178 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an ad- 
mirer. Outside there are pictures as vivid. 
Here are the clumsy leather-topped coach with 
its masked occupant and stumbling horses ; the 
towed trekschuit, with its merry freight, sliding 
swiftly through the low-lying landscape ; the 
windy mole, stretching seaward, with its flaring 
beacon-fire. Here again in the street is the 
toy-shop with its open front and store of mimic 
drums and halberds for the martial little burgh- 
ers ; here are the fruiteress with her stall of 
grapes and melons, the rat-catcher with his 
string of trophies, the fowler and his clap-net, 
the furrier with his stock of skins. Many of 
the designs have also that additional interest 
which is universal as well as local. Such is the 
one to the proverb, *' Between two stools one 
comes to the ground," or, as Cats has it " Nemo 
potest Thetidem simul et Galatean amare.'' 
The luckless Philander of the story has been 
trying to solve the problem, but without suc- 
cess. He has been flirting among the sand- 
hills with Thetis, who has her fish upon her 
head in "ocean-smelling osier"; and now 
Galatea the milkmaid has come suddenly upon 
them in a hat which looks like an inverted basin 
with a tuft : and he will probably experience 
what is high- Dutch for a mauvcds quart d'heure. 



''Vader Cats:' 179 

Another illustrates as pertinently the adage, " It 
is ill hunting with unwilling hounds," although 
the dogs are but a detail in the landscape, 
and the real moral is pointed by humanity. 
*' Griet," poor soul, shamefaced and ill-at- 
ease, stands awkwardly by the door-settle, 
looking away from the other actors in the 
drama, apparently her suitor and his father. By 
the purse in her hand we must conclude she is 
rich ; by .a certain constraint in her carriage we 
may perhaps also infer that she is not so well- 
born as her intended. It is, in fact, a Batavian 
** marriage a la mode'''' that is in progress, if 
such a word may be employed where nothing is 
progressing. For if the lady is simply passive, 
the gentleman, whose name is Claes, is violently 
demonstrative. He resists all efforts of his 
senior to bring him to the front — gesticulates 
wildly, and digs his right heel doggedly in the 
ground. He will none of her, nor all her 
*' brooches, pearls and owches," — her gear and 
household stuff, — her rents and her comings-in. 
The round cap and collar of the female figure 
in this picture, the short-skirt with its rigid folds 
and dark border, the puffed shoulder-pieces and 
long chatelaine, remind us of one characteristic 
of these designs which might be anticipated in 
so observant an artist, but which not the less 



i8o Miscellanies, Second Series. 

deserves especial mention. This is the excel- 
lence and variety of the costume. And it is not 
only the peasants and fish-women whose dress 
is faithfully reproduced, but that of the better 
classes is as scrupulously delineated. It would 
take a chapter to describe the wonderful cav- 
aliers, with their long-plumed hats and slashed 
jerkins, their endless tags and aiglets and 
rosettes ; or the sumptuous ladies with their 
broidered sleeves, and purfled stomachers, and 
monumental ruffs. The design inscribed 
"Amor, ut pila, vices exigit," which may be 
roughly Englished by " Love asks return," is 
an example of this, which is as good as any. In 
a " trim garden," with symmetrically-clipped 
trees and hedges, a gentleman and a lady are 
playing at battledore and shuttlecock. The 
former, whose right foot is neatly turned out 
after the most approved fashion, so as to show 
the inside of his calf, has just delivered his 
blow ; the latter leaps lightly to return it with 
as much agility as may be consistent with good 
manners and a buckramed state attire. 

There is also a certain grim side to these 
Dutch moralities which is not without its sig- 
nificance. Through the whole series it peeps 
out here and there ; but it is more plainly mani- 
fest in the later works, when we must suppose 



''Vader Caisr i8i 

old age to be stealing upon the writer, and 
busying his thoughts with Calvinistic images of 
mortality and decay. The illustration to one of 
these — a full-page plate — is certainly a most 
gruesome allegory of life. A man is seen 
scaling an apple-tree, which clings with snake- 
like roots to the side of a flaming pit or well, 
inhabited by a fearsome and ravening dragon. 
About the brim of the pit a restless bear runs 
backwards and forwards, eager for its prey ; 
but rats are gnawing busily at the tree-trunk, 
and by and by the tree, climber and all, will 
topple crashing in the flames. Another com- 
position — the frontispiece to '' Coffins for the 
Living " — takes up two pages, and is even more 
impressive. The scene is a kind of cemetery 
with magnificent sepulchral monuments, where- 
from the covers have been lifted so as to ex- 
hibit their mouldering tenants. To the right a 
party of richly-clad Orientals are gazing curi- 
ously at a crowned skeleton : — " Where are the 
riches of Croesus?" On the opposite side of 
the picture, a personage resembling an Eastern 
Mage, and a beautiful and majestic woman — 
perhaps the Queen of Sheba — bend wonder- 
ingly over a second tomb: — "Where is the 
wisdom of Solomon?" Here it is a group of 
soldiers that is attracted ; there a group of 



i82 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

heroes. But the main interest centres in front 
of a lofty canopy, the sable curtains of which 
are drawn aside by grinning atomies, discover- 
ing a figure more pitiful than any in its forlorn 
and fleshless impotence: — "Where is the 
beauty of Helen?" '* Was this the face that 
launch'd a thousand ships, and burned the top- 
less towers of Ilium > " Surely a fruitful theme 
for the gray-haired sage of Sorgh-vliet, when the 
blast whistled keener through his wind-stripped 
espaliers, and the dead leaves gathered at the 
garden borders I 

And here we close the great folio. But what 
a picture-book it must have been in the days 
when picture books were fewer I One can im- 
agine the Dutch children poring over it, much 
as Charles Lamb pored over the queer illus- 
trations in Stackhouse's '* History of the Bible." 
One can even fancy that their minds took a cer- 
tmn haunting after-colour or savour from this 
early study, like the jar which, as Horace says, 
remembers its first wine. That the volume is a 
favourite with the distinguished Dutch artist, 
now naturalised among us, Sir Laurence Alma- 
Tadema, is, perhaps, not remarkable ; nor is it 
remarkable that (as Mr. Warter relates) it 
should have attracted the wandering and omniv- 
orous appetite of Southey. But it is surely of 



''Vader Cats" 185 

special interest that it was among the first art- 
treasures of Reynolds, who loved it as a boy, 
and many of whose sketches — " done by Joshua 
out of pure idleness " — were copied from the 
gallery of "Vader Cats. " 



PART II 



OCCASIONAL VERSES AND INSCRIP- 
TIONS. 



{Too hard it is to sing 
In these untuneful times, 

When only coin can ring. 
And no one cares for rhymes I 

Alas ! for him who climbs 
To Aganippe's spring : — 
Too hard it is to sing 

In these untuneful times / 

His kindred clip his wing ; 

His feet the critic limes ; 
If Fame her laurel bring 

Old Age his forehead rimes : — 
Too hard it is to sing 

In these untuneful times /) 



A BALLAD OF THE QUEEN'S MAJESTY. 
(June 22, 1897.) 

TV TAME that has been thy nation's shield 
* ^ On many an alien shore and sea ; 
Name that in many a fateful field 
Has taught the stubborn foe to flee ; 
Promise and proof of virtues three. 
Valour unvaunting, vigour, verve, 

We hail thy white-winged Sovereignty, 
Victoria I — whom God preserve I 

Monarchs there are to whom men yield 

Obeisance — in a bondman's key ; 
Monarchs whose sceptred might doth wield 

Only the rod of Tyranny ; 

We, in free homage, being free, — 
We joy that naught can shake or curve 

Thy rectitude of Royalty, 
Victoria I — whom God preserve I 

Therefore from all our towers be pealed 
The note of greeting ; therefore be, 

As from a thousand springs unsealed, 
Outpoured the tide of mirth and glee ; 
For surely not to-day shall we 
187 



1 88 Miscellanies, Second Series, 

From sixty years' allegiance swerve, 
Or shame thy twice-told Jubilee, 
Victoria 1 — whom God preserve I 

Envoy. 
Queen ! — to whom true men bend the knee, 

Our island heart and brain and nerve. 
Are loyal — loyal unto thee, 

Victoria 1 — whom God preserve I 



A Madrigal. 189 



A MADRIGAL. 

(Written for " Choral Songs in Honour of Queen 
Victoria," 1899.) 

I. 

"\1 7HO can dwell with greatness 1 Greatness 
^^ is too high ; 

Flowers are for the meadow, suns are for the 

sky;— 
Ah 1 but there is greatness in this land of ours, 
High as is the sunlight, humble as the flowers 1 

II. 

Queen, of thee the fable I Lady, thine the fate I 
Royal, and yet lowly, lowly and yet great ; — 
Great in far dominion, great in bannered years, 
Greater still as woman, greatest in thy tears ! 



190 Miscellanies y Second Series, 



FOR A FLORAL WREATH. 

(January 22, 1901.) 

GREAT Queen, great Lady, Mother most of 
all! 
Beyond the turmoil of Earth's hopes and 

fears. 
How should you need the tribute of our 
tears? — 
Our helpless, useless tears 1 But they must fall. 



Rank and File, 191 



RANK AND FILE. 
(South Africa, 1900-1.) 

I. 

UNDISTINGUISHED Dead I 
Whom the bent covers, or the rock- 
strewn steep 
Shows to the stars, for you I mourn, — I weep, 
O undistinguished Dead 1 

II. 

None knows your name. 
Blacken'd and blurr'd in the wild battle's brunt. 
Hotly you fell . . . with all your wounds in 
front ; 

This is your fame I 



O 



192 Miscellanies, Second Series. 



A POSTSCRIPT TO GOLDSMITH'S 
** RETALIATION." 

[^After the Fourth Edition of Doctor Gold- 
smith's Retaliation was printed, the Publisher 
received a supplementary Epitaph on the Wit and 
Punster Caleb Whitefoord. Though it is 
found appended to the later issues of the Poem, it 
has been suspected that Whitefoord wrote it 
himself. It may be that the following, which 
has recently come to light, is another forgery.^ 

HERE Johnson is laid. Have a care how 
you walk ; 
If he stir in his sleep, in his sleep he will talk. 
Ye gods I how he talk'd I What a torrent of 

sound, 
Hishearers invaded, encompass'd and — drown'd! 
What a banquet of memory, fact, illustration, 
In that innings-for-one that he called conversa- 
tion ! 
Can't you hear his sonorous '*Whyno, Sir I" 

and ''Stay, Sir I 
Your premiss is wrong," or " You don't see 
your way, Sir 1 " 



A Postscript to Goldsmith's ^^Retaliation.'' 193 

How he silenc'd a prig, or a slip-shod romancer ! 
How he pounc'd on a fool with a knock-me- 
down answer I 



But peace to his slumbers I Tho' rough in the 

rind, 
The heart of the giant was gentle and kind : 
What signifies now, if in bouts with a friend, 
When his pistol miss'd fire, he would use the 

butt-end > 
If he trampled your flow'rs, like a bull in a 

garden, 
What matter for that ? he was sure to ask par- 
don; 
And you felt on the whole, tho' he'd toss'd you 

and gor'd you, 
It was something, at least, that he had not 

ignor'd you. 
Yes I the outside was rugged. But test him 

within. 
You found he had nought of the bear but the 

skin ; 
And for bottom and base to his anfractuosity, 
A fund of fine feeling, good taste, generosity. 
He was true to his conscience, his King, and 

his duty ; 
And he hated the Whigs^ and he soften'd to 

Beauty. 



194 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

Turn now to his Writings. I grant, in his tales, 
That he made little fishes talk vastly like whales ; 
I grant that his language was rather emphatic. 
Nay, even — to put the thing plainly — dogmatic ; 
But read him for Style, — and dismiss from your 

thoughts, 
The crowd of compilers who copied his faults, — 
Say, where is there English so full and so clear. 
So weighty, so dignified, manly, sincere ? 
So strong in expression, conviction, persuasion > 
So prompt to take colour from place and occa- 
sion ? 
So widely remov'd from the doubtful, the tenta- 
tive ; 
So truly — and in the best sense — argumentative ? 
You may talk of your Burkes and your Gibbons 

so clever. 
But I hark back to him with a ''Johnson for- 
ever 1 " 
And I feel as I muse on his ponderous figure, 
Tho' he's great in this age, in the next he'll 

grow bigger ; 
And still while . . . [Cxtera Desunt.] 



Verses Read at the Omar Khayyam Club. 195 



VERSES READ AT THE DINNER OF 

THE OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB 

ON THURSDAY, MARCH 

25, 1897. 

" — Medio de fonte leporum 
Surgit Omari aliquid.'''' 

— Lucretius {adapted^ 

While we the Feast by Fruit and Wine prolongs 
A Bard bobs up^ and bores us with a Song, 

— The Apiciad, 

9 npWAS Swift who said that people " view 

A In Homer more than Homer knew.'' 
I can't pretend to claim the gift 
Of playing Bentley upon Swift ; 
But I suspect the reading true 
Is '' Omar more than Omar knew," — 
Or why this large assembly met 
Lest we this Omar should forget ? 
( In a parenthesis I note 
Our RusTUM here, without red coat; 
Where Sohrab sits I'm not aware, 
But that's FiRDAUSi in the chair I ) — 
I say then that we now are met 
Lest we this Omar should forget, 



196 Miscellanies y Second Series. 

"Who, ages back, remote, obscure, 
Wrote verses once at Naishapur, — 
Verses which, as I understand, 
Were merely copied out by hand. 
And now, without etched plates, or aid 
Of India paper, or handmade. 
Bid fair Parnassus' top to climb. 
And knock the Classics out of time. 

Persicos odi — Horace said. 
And therefore is no longer read. 
Time, who could simply not endure 
Slight to the Bard of Naishapur, 
(Time, by the way, was rather late 
For one so often up-to-date 1 ) 
Went swiftly to the Roll of Fame 
And blotted Q. H. F. his name. 
Since when, for every youth or miss 
That knows Quis multa gracilis, 
There are a hundred who can tell 
What Omar thought of Heav'n and Hell; 
Who Bahram was ; and where (at need) 
Lies hid the Beaker of Jamshyd ; — 
In short, without a break can quote 
Most of what Omar ever wrote. 

Well, Omar Khayyam wrote of Wine, 
And all of us, sometimes, must dine ; 



Verses Read at the Omar Khayyam Club. 197 

And Omar Khayyam wrote of Roses, 
And all of us, no doubt, have noses ; 
And Omar Khayyam wrote of Love, 
Which some of us are not above. 
Also, he charms to this extent, 
We don't know, always, what he meant. 
Lastly, the man's so plainly dead 
We can heap honours on his head. 

Then, too, he scores in other wise 

By his 'deplorable demise." 

There is so much that we could say 

Were he a Bard of yesterday 1 

We should discuss his draughts and pills. 

His baker's and his vintner's bills ; 

Rake up — perhaps 'tis well we can't — 

Gossip about his maiden aunt ; 

And all that marketable matter 

Which Freeman nicknamed '' Harriet-chatter 1 " 

But here not even Persian candles 

Can light us to the smallest scandals ; — 

Thus far your Omar gains at least 

By having been so long deceased. 

Failing of this, we needs must fall 
Back on his opus after all ; — 
Those quatrains so compact, complete, 
So suited to Fitzgerald's feet, 



i^S Miscellanies, Second Series. 



air >• 
lir ; — 3 



(And, let us add, so subtly planned 
To tempt the imitative band !)— 
Those censers of Omari ware 
That breathe into the perfumed 
His doubt, his unrest, his despai 
Those jewels-four-lines-long that show, 
Eight hundred years and more ago, 
An old thing underneath the sun 
In Babylonish Babylon : — 
A Body and a Soul at strife 
To solve the Mystery of Life I 

So then all hail to Omar K. ! 

(To take our more familiar way) 

Though much of what he wrote and did 

In darkest mystery is hid ; 

And though (unlike our bards) his task 

Was less to answer than to ask ; 

For all his endless Why and Whether, 

He brings us here to-night together ; 

And therefore (as I said before). 

Hail 1 Omar Khayyam, hail I once more 1 



For a Copy of ^ 'The Compleat Angler.'' 199 



FOR A COPY OF *'THE COMPLEAT 
ANGLER." 

" Le rive de la vie champitre a tU de tout temps Vidtal 
des villesJ' — George Sand. 

1CARE not much how folk prefer 
To dress your Chubb or Chavender ; — 
I care no whit for line or hook, 
But still I love old Izaak's book, 
Wherein a man may read at ease 
Of " gander-grass " and '' culver-keys," 
Or with half-pitying wonder, note 
What Topsell, what Du Bartas wrote. 
Or list the song, by Maudlin sung, 
That Marlowe made when he was young : — 
These things, in truth, delight me more 
Than all old Izaak's angling lore. 

These were his Secret. What care I 
How men concoct the Hawthorn-fly, 
Who could as soon make Syllabub 
As catch your Chavender or Chubb ; 
And might not, in ten years, arrive 
At baiting hooks with frogs, alive I — 
But still I love old Izaak's page, 



200 MiscellanieSy Second Series. 

Old Izaak's simple Golden Age^ 

Where blackbirds flute from evVy bough, 

Where lasses " milk the sand-red cow," 

Where lads are " sturdy foot ball swains," 

And nought but soft '' May-butter" rains; — 

Where you may breathe untainted air 

Either at Hodsden or at Ware ; 

And sing, or slumber, or look wise 

Till Phxhus sink adown the skies ; 

Then, laying rod and tackle by, 

Choose out some " cleanly Alehouse " nigh, 

With ballads " stuck about the wall," 

Of Joan of France or English Mall — 

With sheets that smell of lavender — 

There eat your Chubb (or Chavender)^ 

And keep old Izaak's honest laws 

For *' mirth that no repenting draws'* — 

To wit, a friendly stave or so, 

That goes to Heigh-trolollie-loe 

Or more to make the ale-can pass, 

A hunting song of William Basse — 

Then talk of fish and fishy diet, 

And dream you " Study to be quiet." 



The Collector to His Library. 201 



THE COLLECTOR TO HIS LIBRARY, 
(Written for Ballads of Books, 1887.) 

BROWN Books of mine, who never yet 
Have caused me anguish or regret, — 
Save when some fiend in human shape 
Has set your tender sides agape, 
Or soiled with some unmanly smear 
The candour of your margin clear, 
Or writ you with some phrase inane, 
The bantling of an idle brain, — 
I love you : and because must end 
This commerce between friend and friend, 
I do implore each kindly Fate — 
To each and all I supplicate — 
That you, whom I have loved so long. 
May not be vended '* for a song " ; — 
That you, my dear desire and care. 
May 'scape the common thoroughfare. 
The dust, the eating rain, and all 
The shame and squalor of the Stall. 
Rather I trust your lot may touch 
Some Croesus — if there should be such — 



202 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

To buy you, and that you may so 
From Croesus unto Croesus go 
Till that inevitable day 
When comes your moment of decay. 

This, more than other good, I pray. 



** A/i Appendix to the Row f ant Library.'" 20J 



FOR ''AN APPENDIX TO THE ROW- 
FANT LIBRARY." 

(F. L. L. : In Memoriam. ) 

^^ TJIS Books." Oh yes, his Books I 
^ * know, — 

Each worth a monarch's ransom ; 
But now, beside their row on row, 

I see, erect and handsome, 

The courtly Owner, glass in eye, 

With half-sad smile, forerunning 
Some triumph of an apt reply, — 

Some master-stroke of punning. 

Where shall we meet his like again ? 

Where hear, in such perfection. 
Such genial talk of gods and men, — 

Such store of recollection ; 

Or where discern a verse so neat, 

So well-bred and so witty, — 
So finished in its least conceit. 

So mixed of mirth and pity ? 



204 MiscellanieSf Second Series. 

Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease, 

Praed buoyancy and banter ; 
What modern bard would learn from these ? 

Ah, tempora mutantur ! 

The old rdgime departs, — departs ; 

Our days of mime and mocker, 
For all their imitative arts, 

Produce no Frederick Locker. 



*^Good Luck to Your Fishing.'' 20$ 
"GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING I" 

(For a Picture by G. F. Watts, R. A.) 
A^ OOD luck to your fishing I 
^^ And what have you caught ? 
Ah, would that my wishing 

Were more than a thought I 
Ah, would you had caught her, 

Young Chloe, for me, — 
Young Chloe, the daughter 

Of Proteus, the sea I 

She irks me, she irks me, 

With blue of her eyes ; 
She irks me, she irks me, 

With little drawn sighs ; 
She lures me with laughter, 

She tempts me with tears ; 
And hope follows after, — 

Hope only, — and fears I 

Good luck to your fishing I 

But would you had caught 
That maid beyond wishing. 

That maid beyond thought 1 
O cast the line deeper, 

Deep — deep in the sea ; 
And catch her, and keep her, 

Dan Cupid, for me 1 



2o6 Miscellanies f Second Series. 



"WHEN THIS OLD WORLD WAS 

NEW." 
(For a Lady's Autograph-Book.) 

WHEN this old world was new, 
Before the towns were made, 
Love was a shepherd too. 

Clear-eyed as flowers men grew, 

Of evil unafraid, 

When this old world was new. 

No skill had they to woo, 
Who but their hearts obey'd — 
Love was a shepherd too. 

What need to feign or sue I 
Not so was life delay 'd 
When this old world was new. 

Under the candid blue 

They kiss'd their shepherd-maid — 

Love was a shepherd too. 

They knew but joy ; they knew 
No whit of state or grade : 
When this old world was new, 
Love was a shepherd too. 



For a Copy of the " Vicar of Wakefield.'' 207 



FOR A COPY OF THE ** VICAR OF 
WAKEFIELD." 

BY Goldsmith's tomb, the City's cry 
Grows faint and distant ; now no more, 
From that famed Street he trod of yore, 
Men turn where those old Templars lie 1 
Only some dreamer such as I 

Pauses awhile from dust and roar 

By Goldsmith's tomb I 

And then — ah, then I when none is nigh, 
What shadowy shapes, unseen before, 
Troop back again from Lethe's shore 1 — 

How the ghosts gather then, and sigh 

By Goldsmith's tomb I 



2o8 MiscellanieSj Second Series. 



AFTER A HOLIDAY. 

HTHREE little ducks by a door, 
*■ Snuggling aside in the sun; 

The sweep of a threshing-floor, 
A flail with its One-two, One ; 

A shaggy-haired, loose-limbed mare, 

Grave as a master at class ; 
A foal with its heels in the air. 

Rolling, for joy, in the grass ; 

A sunny-eyed, golden-haired lad, 
Laughing, astride on a wall ; 

A collie-dog, lazily glad . . . 
Why do I think of it all > 

Why } From my window I see. 

Once more through the dust-dry pane 

The sky like a great Dead Sea, 
And the lash of the London rain ; 

And I read — here in London town, 
Of a murder done at my gate, 

And a goodly ship gone down. 
And of homes made desolate ; 



After a Holiday. 209 

And I know, with the old sick heart, 
That but for a moment's space, 

We may shut our sense, and part 
From the pain of this tarrying place. 



210 Miscellanies J Second Series. 



FOR A CHARITY ANNUAL. 

IN Angel-Court the sunless air 
Grows faint and sick ; to left and right 
The cowering houses shrink from sight, 
Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare. 

Misnamed, you say ? For surely rare 
Must be the angel-shapes that light 

In Angel-Court 1 

Nay I — the Eternities are there. 

Death at the doorway stands to smite ; 

Life in its garrets leaps to light ; 
And Love has climbed that crumbling stair 

In Angel-Court. 



On a Picture by Hoppner. 211 



ON A PICTURE BY HOPPNER. 

(Mrs. Gwyn, — Goldsmith's " Jessamy Bride.") 

" A ND you went once with myrtle crowned I" 
-'*• You once were she, for whom 
Poor Goldsmith's gentle genius found 
That name of jasmine-bloom I 

How strange it seems I You whom he loved, 
You who were breathing, — vital, — 

Not feigned in books, — for us have proved 
Scarce but a fragrant title ;— 

A shape too shadowy far to stand 

Beside the girl Primroses, — 
Beside the dear old Vicar, and 

Our more-than-brother, Moses 1 

We cannot guess your voice, who know 

Scamp Tony's view-halloo ; 
For us e'en thin Beau Tibbs must show 

More palpable than you ! — 



212 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Yet some scant news we have. You came, 

When that kind soul had fled ; 
You begged his hair ; you kept his name 

Long on your lips, 'tis said ; 

You lived ; — and died. Or when, or how, 

Who asks I This age of ours 
But marks your grass-grown headstone now 
Goldsmith's jasmine flowers I 



The Philosophy of the Porch, 2 1 3 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PORCH. 

BY A SUMMER-DAY STOIC. 
(To A. J. MUNBY.) 

" CulHvous notre jardiny 

— Voltaire. 

ACROSS my Neighbour's waste of whins 
For roods the rabbit burrows ; 
You scarce can see where first begins 

His range of steaming furrows ; 
I am not sad that he is great, 

He does not ask my pardon ; 
Beside his wall I cultivate 
My modest patch of garden. 

I envy not my Neighbour's trees ; — 

To me it nowise matters 
Whether in east or western breeze 

His '* dry-tongued laurel patters." 
Me too the bays become ; but still, 

I sleep without narcotics, 
Though he should bind his brows at will 

With odorous exotics. 



214 Miscellanies J Second Series. 

Let Goodman Greenfat, glad to dine, 

With true bon-vivant's benison, 
Extol my Neighbour's wit and wine, — ' 

His virtue and his venison : 
I care not. Still for me the gorse 

Will blaze about the thicket ; 
The Common's purblind pauper horse 

Will peer across my wicket ; 



For me the geese will thread the furze, 

In hissing file, to follow 
The tinker's sputtering wheel that whirs 

Across the breezy hollow ; 
And look, where smoke of gipsy huts 

Curls blue against the bushes, — 
That little copse is famed for nuts, 

For nightingales and thrushes I 



But hark 1 I hear my Neighbour's drums! 

Some dreary deputation 
Of Malice or of Wonder comes 

In guise of Adulation. 
Poor Neighbour I Though you like the tune, 

One little pinch of care is 
Enough to clog a whole balloon 

Of aura popularis ; 



The Philosophy of the Porch. 2 1 5 

Not amulets, nor epiderm 

As tough as armadillo's, 
Can shield you if Suspicion worm 

Between your easy pillows ; 
And, though on ortolans you sup, 

Beside you shadowy sitters 
Can pour in your ungenial cup 

Unstimulating bitters. 

Let Envy crave, and Avarice save ; 

Let Folly ride her circuit ; 
I hold that — on this side the grave — 

To find one's vein and work it, 
To keep one's wants both fit and few, 

To cringe to no condition, 
To count a candid friend or two, — 

May bound a man's ambition. 

Swell, South-wind, swell my Neighbour's sails; 

Fill, Fortune, fill his coffers ; 
If Fate has made his role the whale's, 

And we the minnow's offers ; 
I am not sad that he is great, 

He need not ask my pardon ; 
Beside his wall I cultivate 

My modest patch of garden. 



2i6 Miscellanies y Second Series. 



THE HOLOCAUST. 

*^ Heart-freey with the least little touch of spleen?^ 

— Maud. 

A BOVE my mantelshelf there stands 
*^ A little, bronze sarcophagus, 
Carved by its unknown artist's hands, 
With this one word — Amoribus 1 

Along the lid a Love lies dead : 
Across his breast his broken bow ; 

Elsewhere they dig his tiny bed, 
And round it women wailing go : — 

A trick, a toy — mere ** Paris ware," 
Some Quartier- Latin sculptor's whim, 

Wrought in a fit of mock despair, 
With sight, it may be something dim, 

Because the love of yesterday, 

Had left the grenier, light Musette, 

And she who made the morrow gay, 
LuTiNE or MiMi, was not yet, — 



The Holocaust. 217 

A toy. But ah I what hopes deferred, 
(O friend, with sympathetic eye !) 

What vows (now decently interred) 
Within that " narrow compass " lie I 

For there, last night, not sadly, too, 
With one live ember I cremated 

A nest of cooing billets-doux, 
That just two decades back were dated. 



2i8 Miscellanies. Second Series 



THE STREET SINGER. 

(For "Walnuts and Wine.") 

T T E stands at the curb and sings, 
•*• ■*■ 'Tis a doleful tune and slow . . 
Ah me, if I had but wings I 

He bends to the coin one flings, 
But he never attempts to go, — 
He stands at the curb, and sings. 

The conjurer comes with his rings, 
And the Punch-and-Judy show. 
(Ah me, if I had but wings 1 ) 

They pass, like all fugitive things, — 
They fade and they pass, but lo I 
He stands at the curb and sings. 

All the magic that music brings 
Is lost when he murders it so . . . 
Ah me 1 if I had but wings I 

But the worst is a thought that stings, 
There is nothing at hand to throw, — 
He stands at the curb and sings . . . 
Ah me I if I had but wings I 



The Ballad of the Bore. 219 



THE BALLAD OF THE BORE. 

(For "Alma Mater's Mirror," 1887.) 

" Garrulus hunc quando consu7?iet cunqtie." 

— HoR. Sat. ix, lib. i, 

T SEE him come from far, 

* And, sick with hopelessness, 

Invoke some kindly star, — 

I see him come, not less. 

Is there no sure recess 
Where hunted men may lie ? 

Ye Gods, it is too hard ! 
I feel his glittering eye, — 

Defend us from The Bard I 

He knows nor let nor bar: 

With ever-nearing stress, 
Like Juggernaut his car, 

I see him onward press ; 

He waves a huge MS. ; 
He puts evasion by, 

He stands — as one on guard. 
And reads — how volubly I — 

Defend us from The Bard I 



220 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

He reads — of Fates that mar, 
Of Woes beyond redress, 

Of all the Moons that are, 
Of maids that never bless 
(As one, indeed, might guess) ; 

Of Vows, of Hopes too high. 
Of Dolours by the yard 

That none believe (nor buy), — 
Defend us from The Bard I 

Envoy. 

Prince Phcebus, all must die. 
Or well- or evil-starred. 
Or whole of heart or scarred ; 

But why in this way — why ? 
Defend us from The Bard. 



Julf. 221 

JULY. 

(ViRELAI NOUVEAU.) 

GOOD-BYE to the Town I— good-bye I 
Hurrah I for the sea and the sky I 

In the street the flower-girls cry; 
In the street the water-carts ply ; 
And a fluter, with features awry, 
Plays fitfully, "Scots wha hae"— 
And the throat of that fluter is dry ; — 
Good-bye to the Town ! — good-bye 1 

And over the roof-tops nigh 

Comes a waft like a dream of the May ; 

And a lady-bird lit on my tie ; 

And a cock-chafer came with the tray ; 

And a butterfly (no one knows why) 

Mistook my Aunt's cap for a spray ; 

And *' next door" and " over the way" 

The neighbours take wing and fly : — 

Hurrah for the sea and the sky I 

To Buxton, the waters to try, — 
To Buxton goes old Mrs. Bligh ; 
And the Captain to Homburg and play 
Will carry his cane and his eye ; 



222 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

And even Miss Morgan Lefay 
Is flitting — to far Peckham Rye ; 
And my Grocer has gone — in a '* Shay," 
And my Tailor has gone — in a *' Fly" ; — 
Good-bye to the Town 1 — good-bye 1 

And it's O for the sea and the sky 1 
And it's O for the boat and the bay I 
For the white foam whirling by, 
And the sharp, salt edge of the spray I 
For the wharf where the black nets fry, 
And the wrack and the oarweed sway 1 
For the stroll when the moon is high 
To the nook by the Flag-house gray 1 
For the risus ah angulo shy 
From the Some-one we designate '* Di I" 
For the moment of silence, — the sigh ! 
** How I dote on a Moon 1 " " So do 1 1 " 
For the token we snatch on the sly I 
(With nobody there to say Fie !) — 
Hurrah 1 for the sea and the sky 1 

So Phillis, the fawn-footed, hie 
For a hansom. Ere close of the day 
Between us a " world " must lie, — 
Good-bye to the Town ! — Good-bye I 
Hurrah I for the sea and the sky 1 



Notes of a Honeymoon. 223 



NOTES OF A HONEYMOON. 

' Dans ce ravissant opera qu'on appelle r amour, 

le libretto nUst presque rien,*^ 

— Victor Hugo. 



IN THE TRAIN. 

AT last we are free, — 
All hail, Hymenseus ! 
From C, and from D, — 
Ai last! — we are free. 
What a comfort 'twill be 

*' Mrs. Grundy" can't see us 1 
At last we are free, — 
All hail, Hymenaeus 1 

FROM THE HOTEL WINDOW. 

"What a mountain 1 " '^ What ferns I" 

'' And a pond, too, for Rover I " 

Da capo — in turns. 
*' What a mountain ! " " What ferns I " 

Meanwhile the toast burns, 
And the kettle boils over ; — 
" What a mountain I " " What ferns ! " 

" And a pond, too, for Rover." 



224 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

THE FIRST WALK. 

^* Join hands for a peep. 

You must keep yourself steady. 
See the cliff goes down steep, — 
Join hands for a peep. 
This they call ' Lovers' Leap,' — 

We have leaped it already 1 
Join hands for a peep. 

You must keep yourself steady 1 " 



ARCADIA. 

** I can hear a sheep-bell." 

*' There are doves cooing yonder." 
" It sounds like a spell, — 
I can hear a sheep-bell." 
** Shall we like this as well — 

In a twelvemonth > " * * / wonder 1 " 
** I can hear a sheep-bell." 

** There are doves cooing yonder." 

AT A BOOKSTALL. 

** Here it is in the * Times,' — 
Dear Charlie, — how funny 1 
'Twixt a ' Smith ' and a ' Symes,'—- 
Here it is 1— in the ' Times.' " 



Notes of a Honeymoon. 225 

** And it's not with the ' crimes ' 1 " 
" You must pay. Fve no money I 

Here it is in the ' Times,' — 
Dear Charlie, — how funny I " 



MISGIVINGS (No. l). 

*' Poor Papa, — he's alone ! " 

She is sure he must miss her. 
There's a tear in the tone, — 
''Poor Papal He's alone I " 
At this point, I own. 
There is naught but to kiss her. 
" Poor Papa, — he's alone I " 

She is sure he must miss her. 



MISGIVINGS (No. 2). 

By-play as before. 
*' Then you'll love me for ever ? " 
" For ever — and more 1 " 

(By-play as before.) 
** Never think me a ' bore ' ? — 

Never laugh at me ?" '^ Never II 
By-play as before. 

"Then you'll love me for ever?" 



226 Miscellanies, Second Series, 

THE SUM TOTAL. 

She is all that is sweet I 

I must learn to deserve her. 
Bright, kind ... I repeat — 
She is all that is sweet I 
(Here a noise in the street 

Puts an end to my fervour.) 
She is all that is sweet 1 

I must learn to deserve her. 



^^Changey 227 



" CHANGE." 

CREEZE, freeze, O icy wind I 
■■• Lucilla's cap's awry ; 
No signal undesigned 
To those that read the sky. 

Dull drags the breakfast by : 
She's something on her mind ; — 
Freeze, freeze, O icy wind 1 

Lucilla's cap's awry 1 

" You're tired — " *' And you're unkind 1 " 
** You're cross — " " That I deny 1 " 

** Perhaps you're both combined." 

"I'm tired of You.— Good-bye I "— 
Freeze, freeze, O icy wind 1 
Lucilla's cap's awry I 



228 Miscellanies, Second Series. 



" FAIR." 

BLOW, blow, Etesian gale I 
Lucilla's cap is straight ; 
Fill fast the flowing sail 
Of happy man and mate. 

'* What is it, Dear?— A plate ? 
Do taste this potted quail ?" 
Blow, blow, Etesian gale I 
Lucilla's cap is straight. 

" More sugar ? — No ? You're pale. 

My Own, you work too late 1 
Ah me, ii you should fail 1 

I'll see you to the gate." — 
Blow, blow, Etesian gale 1 

Lucilla's cap is straight. 



To One Who Bids Me Sing. 229 



TO ONE WHO BIDS ME SING. 

" The straw is too old to make pipes of.^^ 

— Don Quixote. 

YOU ask a " many-winter'd " Bard 
Where hides his old vocation ? 
I'll give — the answer is not hard — 
A classic explanation. 

** Immortal" though he be, he still, 
Tithonus-like, grows older. 
While she, his Muse of Pindus Hill, 
Still bares a youthful shoulder. 

Could that too-sprightly Nymph but leave 
Her ageless grace and beauty, 

They might, betwixt them both, achieve 
A hymn de Senedute ; 

But She — She can't grow gray ; and so, 
Her slave, whose hairs are falling, 

Must e'en his Doric flute forego. 
And seek some graver calling, — 

Not ill-content to stand aside, 

To yield to minstrels fitter 
His singing-robes, his singing-pride, 

His fancies sweet — and bitter I 



230 Miscellanies, Second Series. 



THE SONG OF THE SEA WIND. 

T T OW it sings, sings, sings, 
■■■ ■*• Blowing sharply from the sea-line, 
With an edge of salt that stings ; 
How it laughs aloud, and passes, 
As it cuts the close cliff-grasses ; 
How it sings again, and whistles 
As it shakes the stout sea-thistles — 
How it sings 1 

How it shrieks, shrieks, shrieks, 
In the crannies of the headland. 
In the gashes of the creeks ; 

How it shrieks once more, and catches 
Up the yellow foam in patches ; 
How it whirls it out and over 
To the corn-field and the clover — 
How it shrieks I 

How it roars, roars, roars, 
In the iron under-caverns, 

In the hollows of the shores ; 
How it roars anew, and thunders, 
As the strong hull splits and sunders : 



The Song; of the Sea Wind, 231 

And the spent ship, tempest driven, 
On the reef lies rent and riven — 
How it roars I 

How it wails, wails, wails. 

In the tangle of the wreckage, 
In the flapping of the sails ; 
How it sobs away, subsiding. 
Like a tired child after chiding ; 
And across the ground swell rolling, 
You can hear the bell-buoy tolling — 
How it wails 1 



232 Miscellanies, Second Series, 



LOVE'S QUEST. 

(For a Mural Painting.) 

WHEN AS the watches of the night had 
grown 
To that deep loneliness where dreams begin, 
I saw how Love, with visage worn and 
thin, — 
With wings close-bound, went through a town 

alone. 
Death-pale he showed, and inly seemed to 
moan 
With sore desire some dolorous place to win; 
Sharp brambles passed had streaked his daz- 
zling skin, — 
His bright feet eke were gashed with many a 
stone. 

And, as he went, I, sad for piteousness, 

Might see how men from door and gate 
would move 
To stay his steps ; or womankind would press, 

With wistful eyes, to balconies above. 
And bid him enter in. But Love not less, 
Mournful, kept on his way. Ah, hapless 
Love! 



To a Lady. 233 



TO A LADY. 

(With a Volume of Herbert.) 

I. 

WHEN I go 
" ' From my place 
At your feet, 
Sweet, 
All I know 

Of your face 
I recall, — 
All; 
Being by 

(In the net) 
I forget. ■ 
Why? 

II. 

Being by, 

I but hear 
What you say, — 
Yea, 



234 Miscellanies f Second Series. 

Naught am I 

But an ear 
To the word 
Heard ; 
Then I go 

And the grace 
Of your face 
Know. 



For a Copy of " The Story of Rosina:' 23 $ 



FOR A COPY OF ''THE STORY OF 
ROSINA." 

XI 7 HAT would our modern maids to-day > 
^^ I watch, and can't conjecture : 
A dubious tale? — an Ibsen play? — 
A pessimistic lecture ? 

I know not. But this, Child, I know; 

You like things sweet and seemly, 
Old-fashioned flowers, old shapes in Bow, 

"Auld Robin Gray" (extremely) ; 

You — with my *' Dorothy" ^ — delight 

In fragrant cedar-presses ; 
In window corners warm and bright,. 

In lawn, and lilac dresses ; 

You still can read, at any rate, 

Charles Lamb and " Evelina" ; 
To you, My Dear, I dedicate 

This " Story of Rosina." 

iSee Collected FoemSf i, 115. 



256 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 



TO LORD De TAB LEY. 

(In Acknowledgment of a Volume of Poems.) 

STILL may the Muses foster thee^ O Friend, 
Who, while the vacant quidnuncs stand at 
gaze, 
Wond'ring what Prophet next the Fates may 
send. 
Still tread'st the ancient ways ; 

Still climb'st the clear-cold altitudes of Song, 

Or ling'ring "by the shore of old Romance," 
Heed'st not the vogue, how little or how long, 
Of marvels made in France. 

Still to the summits may thy face be set, 

And long may we, that heard thy morning 
rhyme. 
Hang on thy noonday music, nor forget 
In the hushed even-time I 



To Lady Dorothy Nevill. 237 



TO LADY DOROTHY NEVILL. 

(With a Memoir of Horace Walpole.) 

HERE is Horace his Life. I have ventured 
to draw him 
As the Berrys, the Conways, the Montagus 

saw him : 
Very kind to his friends, to the rest only so-so ; 
A Talker, Fine Gentleman, Wit, Virtuoso ; 
With — running through all his sham-Gothic 

gimcrackery — 
A dash of S^vigne, Saint-Simon and Thackeray. 
For errors or ignorance, haste, execution, 
From you, his descendant, I ask absolution. 



238 Miscellanies f Second Series, 



TO EDMUND GOSSE. 

(With a First Edition of " Atalanta in Calydon.") 

A T your pleasure here I hold 
*^ " Atalanta, snowy-souled : " 
Rather smudgy though, — the gold 
Not so brilliant as of old ; 
First Edition, — this is plain ; 
Monogram of J. B. Payne ... 
Dogg'rel this, but it was reckoned 
Metre under George the Second. 
Then a man was thought a Bard 
If by striving very hard 
He could write — say once a quarter — 
Something just as long, or shorter. 
Straight they crowned his head with bay, 
Nobles took him home to '' lay " ; 
Maids of honour for his muse 
Quite forgot their " P's " and '* Q's." 
See his name on all the posts ; 
People rush to buy in hosts 
Tonson's last impression with 
Author's portrait, done by Smith ; 



To Edmund Gosse. 239 



All his little words are quoted ; 
All his little airs are noted ; 
And, if he goes trickling on 
From his paltry Helicon, 
He is made Court-Footman or. 
Possibly, Ambassador I 



TO THE SAME. 
(With Churchill's « Poems," 1763.) 

\1 7HEN Churchill wrote, th' Aonian maid 
^^ He served was scarce of speech afraid ; 

She used no phrase to circumvent. 

The homely article she meant, 
But plainly called a spade a spade. 

Nor was the public much dismayed. 
He but his age's law obeyed ; — 

They liked to see the 'bludgeon's dent 
When Churchill wrote. 

'Tis not so now. To-day the trade 
Demands the finest Sheffield blade ; 

We use a subtler instrument ; 

We cut for depth and not extent . . . 
But would 'twere ours — the Mark they made — 
When Churchill wrote 1 



240 MiscellanieSj Second Series. 

TO THE SAME. 
(With a Memoir of Horace Walpole.) 

AD I but Walpole's wit, I'd write 



H 



A quatrain here to-day 
Should turn the wig of Prior white, 
And make e'en Horace gray ; 

Or had I Stanhope's pen (the same 
That once he gave to Young), 

I would as neat a couplet frame 
As e'er was said or sung ; 

But since I've not, I can't, you know; 

The page must go without it ; 
This is my latest gift ; and so . . . 

And so, that's all about it 1 



TO THE SAME. 

(With " At the Sign of the Lyre.") 

" DOOK against book." " Agreed," I said 
■'-'But 'twas the truck of Diomed I 
And yet, in Fairy-land, I'm told 
Dead leaves — as these — will turn to gold. 
Take them. Sir Alchemist, and see 1 
Nothing transmutes like sympathy. 



To Edmund Gosse. 241 

TO THE SAME. 
(With Vincent Bourne's " Poetical Works.") 

GOSSIP, may we live as now, 
Brothers ever, I and thou ; 
Us may never Envy's mesh hold, 
Anger never cross our threshold ; 
Let our little Lares be 
Friendship and Urbanity. 



TO THE SAME. 
(With Goldsmith's « Selected Poems.") 

GRUB-STREET is Milton-Street to-day; 
And that antiqua Mater 
Whom Goldsmith served has passed away ; 
But is our lot the greater ? 

Ah no ! as some lean rascal hides 

His misery from his betters, 
We wrap our trash in parchment sides, 

And call our task-work ** Letters." 



242 MiscellanieSj Second Series. 

TO THE SAME. 

(With a Copy of Walton's " Lives.") 

YOU write your Life of Donne. 'Twill be 
A masterpiece of sympathy I 
Exact, I know, in fact and date, 
And skilled to lead, to stimulate. 
To show, as you would have him seen, 
That morbid, mystic, mighty Dean. 

But will you catch old Izaak's phrase 
That glows with energy of praise ? 
Old Izaak's ambling unpretence 
That flames with untaught eloquence } 
Will you ? I pause for a reply, 
And you must answer, Friend, not I. 



TO THE SAME. 
(With Eight Volumes of the Author's Works.) 

" Exegi monumenium." 

P IGHT volumes 1 — all well-polished prose, 
*-' Or better verse (as some suppose) ; 
In style more playful than severe ; 



To Edmund Gosse, 243 

Moral in tone (pour qui salt lire); 
All written by my single pen, 
And praised by some distinguished men, 
But else not widely read, I fear : — 

Crown me, Melpomene, my Dear 1 



244 Miscellanies f Second Series. 



FOR LOCKER'S " LONDON LYRICS," 



APOLLO made, one April day, 
A new thing in the rhyming way ; 
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, 
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear, 
Then Momus gave a touch satiric, 
And it became a '' London Lyric." 



To Frederick Locker. 245 



TO FREDERICK LOCKER. 

(Dedication of" Proverbs in Porcelain.") 

J S it to kindest Friend I send 
-*• This nosegay gathered new ? 
Or is it more to Critic sure ? 

To Singer clear and true ? 
I know not which indeed, nor need; 

All three I found — in You. 



246 MiscellanieSy Second Series, 



TO EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

(Dedication of « At the Sign of the Lyre.") 

lyrO need to-day that we commend 

'■ ^ This pinnace to your care, O Friend I 

You steered the bark that went before 

Between the whirlpool and the shore ; 

So, — though we need no pilot now, 

We write your name upon the prow. 



To Brander Matthews. 247 



TO BRANDER MATTHEWS. 

(With a Volume of Verses.) 

IN vain to-day I scrape and blot : 
The nimble words, the phrases neat, 
Decline to mingle or to meet ; 
My skill is all foregone — forgot. 

He will not canter, walk or trot, 
My Pegasus. I spur, I beat, 

In vain to-day I 

And yet 'twere sure the saddest lot 
That I should fail to leave complete 
One poor ... the rhyme suggests ''con- 
ceit 1 " 
Alas 1 'Tis all too clear I'm not 

In vein to-day. 



248 Miscellanies, Second Series. 



TO THE LATE H. C. BUNNER. 

(With a Volume of Verses.) 

117ITNESS my hand (and seal thereto) 
' ' All ye who wrong by word or sign, 
This unprotected Muse of mine, 
I wish you . . . Something else to do 1 

May all your bills at once fall due 1 

May She, whose grace you seek, decline I 
Witness my hand 1 

But you, acute, accomplished, true 
And candid, who in every line 
Discern a spark (or sparks) divine 

Be blessed I There's good in store for you, — 

Witness my hand I 



To George H. Boughton, R. A. 249 



TO GEORGE H. BOUGHTON, R. A. 

(With a Volume of Verses.) 

SPRING Stirs and wakes by holt and hill ; 
In barren copse and bloomless close 
Revives the memory of the rose, 
And breaks the yellow daffodil. 

Look how the spears of crocus fill 

The ancient hollows of the snows, — 

Spring stirs and wakes I 

Yet what to you are months ? At will 
For you the season comes or goes ; 
We watch the flower that fades and blows, 

But on your happy canvas still 

Spring stirs and wakes I 



2^0 Miscellanies, Second Series. 



TO RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 

(With a Volume of Verses.) 

OLD friends are best I And so to you 
Again I send, in closer throng, 
No unfamiliar shapes of song, 
But those that once you liked and knew. 

You surely will not do them wrong, 

For are you not an old friend, too ? — 
Old friends are best. 

Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue ; — 
All things, in short, to which belong 
The charm, the grace that Time makes 
strong, — 
All these I prize, but (entre nous) 

Old friends are best I 



To Laurence Hutton. 251 



TO LAURENCE HUTTON. 

(With a Volume of Verses.) 

THERE is no ** mighty purpose" in this 
book. 

Of that I warn you at the opening page, 
Lest haply, 'twixt the leaves you careless look 

And finding nothing to reform the age. 

Fall with the rhyme and rhymer in a rage. 
Let others prate of problems and of powers ; 
I bring but fancies born of idle hours, 

That striving only after Art and Ease, 
Have scarcely more of moral than the flowers 

And little else of mission than to please. 



2^2 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

EPIGRAMS. 

On the Poetry of Artifice. 

WITHIN this verse, said Dick, you see 
There's not a single '* B " or " D " : 
Why not (quoth Ned) go farther yet, 
And leave out all the alphabet ? 

On Didactics in Poetry. 

Parnassus' peaks still catch the sun ; 

But why — O lyric brother 1 — 
Why build a Pulpit on the one, 

A Platform on the other ? 

On a Catalogue Raisonn^. 

I doubt your painful pendants who 
Can read a Dictionary through ; 
But he must be a dismal dog 
Who can't enjoy this Catalogue. 



Verses for Menu of Omar Khayyam Club. 2 5 3 



VERSES WRITTEN FOR THE MENU 
OF THE OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB. 

" It does not appear there was any danger in holding 
and singing Siife Pantheism, so long as the Poet made 
his salaam to Mohammed at the beginning and end of the 
Song." — Fitzgerald's Preface to Rubdiyat^ 1872. 

SALAAM to OmarI we that meet to-night 
Have bid Black Care be banished, and 
invite 
The Rose, the Cup, the not-too-ancient Jest, 
To help and cheer us, but beyond the rest, 
Peaceful Digestion with its blissful Calm. 
Therefore to Omar once again — Salaam I 

Salaam to Omar I Life in truth is short 
And mortal man of many ills the sport ; 
Yet still th' Oasis of the Board commends 
Its vantage-ground for cheerful talk of friends. 
And brings Oblivion, like an Eastern Balm. 
Therefore to Omar once again — Salaam I 



2^4 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

HILL AND VALLEY. 

He. 

'' r^OME, let us climb to the height, 
^-^ Peak after peak in the sun, 
As the rays brighten, grow rosy and lighten, 
Now that the thunder has done. 

She. 
** Nay; through the leafage, the light 
Gentlier glimmers below ; 
See through the valley the rivulets sally. 
Singing aloud as they go. 

He. 

** Grandly, ah I grandly the hill 

Broke the black storm on its crest ; 
All the cliff under went leaping the thunder, 
Growling away in the west. 

She. 
" Here it is restful and still ; 

Only the drops from the trees, 
Where the shades darkle, fall slowly and 
sparkle, — 
Here there is solace and ease. 



Hill and Valley. 255 

He. 

*' Child, but the eagle above, 

Now that the mists are withdrawn, 
Never wing-weary, sails up from his eyrie, 
E'en to the eye of the dawn. 

She. 
*' Ah ! but below us the dove, 
Crooning for joy on the nest, 
Fills with soft slumbers the leaves without 
number ; 
Shadow and quiet are best." 



2^6 Miscellanies J Second Series. 



**ROSE, IN THE HEDGEROW 
GROWN." 

*' OOSE, in the hedgerow grown, 
-■•^ Where the scent of the fresh sweet hay 
Comes up from the fields new-mown, 
You know it — you know it — alone, 
So I gather you here to-day. 

** For here — was it not here, say? — 
That she came by the woodland way, 
And my heart with a hope unknown 
Rose? 

" Ah yes ! — with her bright hair blown, 
And her eyes like the skies of May, 
And her steps like the rose-leaves strown 

When the winds in the rose-trees play — 
It was here — O my love I — my own 

Rose I" 



A Ballad of Antiquaries. 257 



A BALLAD OF ANTIQUARIES. 

THE days decay as flower of grass, 
The years as silent waters flow ; 
All things that are depart, alas 1 

As leaves the winnowing breezes strow ; 
And still while yet, full-orbed and slow, 
New suns the old horizon climb, 

Old Time must reap, as others sow: 
We are the gleaners after Time ! 

We garner all the things that pass. 

We harbour all the winds may blow ; 
As misers we up-store, amass 

All gifts the hurrying Fates bestow ; 

Old chronicles of feast and show. 
Old waifs of by-gone rune and rhyme, 

Old jests that made old banquets glow:- 
We are the gleaners after Time 1 

We hoard old lore of lad and lass, 
Old flowers that in old gardens grow, 

Old records writ on tomb and brass. 
Old spoils of arrow-head and bow. 



2^8 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

Old wrecks of old worlds' overthrow, 
Old relics of Earth's primal slime, 

All drift that wanders to and fro : — 
We are the gleaners after Time I 

Envoy. 
Friends, that we know not and we know I 

We pray you, by this Christmas chime 
Help us to save the things that go : 

We are the gleaners after time ! 



TRANSLATIONS. 



REGRETS. 

(After Joachim du Bellay.) 

ALAS I where now doth scorn of fortune 
hide? 
And where the heart that still must conqueror 

be ; 
Where the strong hope of immortality, 
And that fine flame to common souls denied ? 

Where is the joyance which at eventide, 
Through the brown night the silver moon could 

see. 
With all the Nine, whenas, in fancy free, 
I led them dance, some sacred stream beside ? 

Dame Fortune now is mistress of my soul, 
And this my heart that I would fain control, 
Is grown the thrall of many a fear and sigh. 

For after-time no more have I desire ; 
No more within I feel that ancient fire. 
And the sweet Muses turn from me and fly. 
261 



262 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 



REGRETS. 

(After Joachim du Bellay.) 

HAPPY the man, like wise Ulysses tried, 
Or him of yore that gat the Fleece of 
Gold, 
Who comes at last, from travels manifold, 
Among his kith and kindred to abide 1 

When shall I see, from my small hamlet-side, 
Once more the blue and curling smoke unrolled ? 
When the poor boundaries of my house behold — 
Poor, but to me as any province wide? 

Ah, more than these imperious piles of Rome 
Laugh the low portals of my boyhood's home 1 
More than their marble must its slate-roof be I 

More than the Tiber's flood my Loire is still 1 
More than the Palatine my native hill, 
And the soft air of Anjou than the seal 



To Monsieur De La Mothe Le Va/er. 263 



TO MONSIEUR DE LA MOTHE LE 

VAYER, UPON THE DEATH OF 

HIS SON. 

(After Moliere.) 

LET thy tears flow, LeVayer, let them flow : — 
None of scant cause thy sorrowing can 
accuse, 
Since, losing that which thou for aye dost lose, 
E'en the most wise might find a ground for woe. 

Vainly we strive with precepts to forego 
The drops of pity that are Pity's dues ; 
And Nature's self, indignant, doth refuse 
To count for fortitude that heartless show. 

No grief, alas I can now bring back again 
The son too dear, by Death untimely ta'en ; 
Yet, not the less, his loss is hard to bear. 

Graced as he was by all the world reveres, 
Large heart, keen wit, a lofty soul and rare, — 
Surely these claim immitigable tears ! 



264 MiscellanieSf Second Series. 



THE BALLAD OF BITTER FRUIT. 

(After Theodore de Banville.) 

IN the wood with its wide arms overspread, 
Where the wan morn strives with the wan- 
ing night, 
The dim shapes strung like a chaplet dread 
Shudder, and sway to the left, the right ; 
The soft rays touch them with fingers white 
As they swing in the leaves of the oak-tree 

browned, 
Fruits that the Turk and the Moor would 

fright,— 
This is King Lewis his orchard ground. 

All of these poor folk, stark and sped, 
Dreaming (who knows I) of what dead despight, 
In the freshening breeze by the morning fed 
Twirl and spin to the mad wind's might ; 
Over them wavers the warm sun bright ; 
Look on them, look on them, skies profound, 
Look how they dance in the morning light I — 
This is King Lewis his orchard ground. 



The Ballad of Bitter Fruit. 265 

Dead, these dead, in a language dead, 
Cry to their fellows in evil plight. 
Day meanwhile thro' the lift overhead 
Dazzles and flames at the blue vault's height ; 
Into the air the dews take flight ; 
Ravens and crows with a jubilant sound 
Over them, over them, hover and light ; — 
This is King Lewis his orchard ground. 

Envoy. 
Prince, we wot of no sorrier sight 
Under the whispering leafage found, 
Bodies that hang like a hideous blight ; — 
This is King Lewis his orchard ground. 



266 MiscellanieSy Second Series. 



**ALBI, NE DOLEAS." 

(Hor. i. 33.) 

LOVE mocks us all. Then cast aside 
These tuneful plaints, my Albius tried, 
For heartless Glycera, from thee 
Fled to a younger lover. See, — 
Low-browed Lycoris burns denied. 

For Cyrus ; he (though goats shall bide 
With wolves ere she in him confide) 
Turns, with base suit, to Pholoe : — 
Love mocks us all 1 

So Venus wills, and joys to guide, 
*Neath brazen yolk pairs ill-allied 

In form and mind. So linked she me 
(Whom worthier wooed) to Myrtale, 
Fair, but less kind than Hadria's tide,— 
Love mocks us all 1 



A Song of Angiola on Earth. 267 

[Note : — The two following pieces were Nos. i and 3 
in a sequence of four Songs of Angiola, of which two only 
are reproduced in the first volume of Collected Poems in 
this issue. As, however, Nos. i and 3 have more than 
once been enquired for, they are here reprinted for the 
convenience of those who desire to possess the entire 
series.] 



A SONG OF ANGIOLA ON EARTH. 

HTHIS is my Lady's throne : — 
-*• Among green leaves, in bowers 

From sunlight fenced with care 
By great boughs overgrown ; 
Her feet are deep in flowers, 
They fall around her hair ; 
There is no bird nor sylvan thing 
But stays to listen, if she sing 
Before I seek her there. 

This is my Lady's face : — 
A cloud of yellow hair 
Stands round about her ear; 
She hath a mouth of grace, 
A forehead white and fair, 
And blue eyes very clear ; 
Lids that go over while I see. 
And shut the world away from me, 
Because she is so dear. 



268 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

This is my Lady's dress : — 
In fine silk fairly fit, 
Blue as an egg is she ; 
Broad bands her shoulders press 
With dark devices knit, 
And small pearls curiously. 
A silver girdle holds her waist, 
Whereon these words are rightly traced 
A true man taketh me. 

This is my Lady's name : — 
It is as soft as air 
And sweet as is the rose ; 
No other sounds the same, 
No song is half so fair, 
No music's dying close ; — 
But yet, methinks, 'twere sin to say 
My Lady's name in open day 

For him to speak who knows. 

This is my Lady's praise : — 
Shame before her is shamed. 
Hate cannot hate repeat ; 
She is so pure of ways 
There is no sin is named 
But falls before her feet ; 
Because she is so frankly free. 
So tender and so good to see. 
Because she is so sweet. 



A Song of Angiola on Earth, 269 

This is my love of her : — 
It waxeth ever new, 
Nor waneth any whit ; 
This all my heart doth stir, 
Just that I may be true, 
And as she findeth fit ; 
There is no thing she bids me do 
But I would die to bear it through 
Because she asketh it. 

Sweet-smelling song of mine, 
Take cassia, balm, and nard ; 

Then hie thee fast with care, 
Find out my Lady sweet. 
With delicate white feet : — 
Before her feet incline, 

And kiss them — kiss them hard, 
Saying " My Master bids thee know. 
Madonna, that he greets thee so 

Seeing thou art so fair." 



270 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 



A SONG OF ANGIOLA DEAD. 

SONG, art thou sad, my Song ? 
Thou hast not ease nor sleep, 
Thou art not gay nor glad ; 
Hast thou not mourned too long ? 
Speak to me, Song, nor weep 
Till thou grow gray and mad 
For that all Love is fled, 
Beauty and bountihead ; — 
Song, thou art sad. 

Song, ah how fair was she I — 
Days but her praise repeat ; — 
Men may seek out with care 
Nowhere such eyes to see, 
Nowhere such little feet, — 
Yea, and such yellow hair ; 
Nowhere like lips, I weet 
Kisses thereon to eat ; — 
Song, she was fair I 



A Song of Angiola Dead. 271 

Song, and how sweet she was I 
Spring breezes kissed her face, 
Little leaves kissed her feet, 
And the sun kissed, because 
Nowhere in any place 
Thing was to kiss so sweet ; 
Nothing so dear as she. 
Gentle and maidenly ; — 
Song, she was sweet I 

Song, but how good she was I 
There was no word she said, 
But it was wise and good ; 
No abject thing but has 
Out from her mercy fed. 
Strong in her pity stood ; 
There was no little child 
But to her leapt and smiled 
Song, she was good ! 

How shall we wait, my Song ? 
There is no mirth in cup. 
Nowhere a feast is spread ; 
Life is all marred and wrong, 
Grief hath consumed it up. 
Now that our Love is fled : 
Earth has no face to see 
Pointing my sword for me ; — 
Song, she is dead 1 



272 Miscellanies^ Second Series. 

Shall we not leave to sing ? 
Nothing can wake her now, 
Nothing can lift her head ; 
There is no tune can bring 
Back to her cheek and brow 
Roses of white and red ; 
Nothing of ours can stir 
Words on the lips of her ; — 
Song, she is dead 1 

Cease then from scent, my Song I 
Change thee thy myrrh for rue, 
Myrtle for calamus ; 
Bring for us garments long, 
Weeds to our grief, and strew 
Dust on the hair of us. 
For that all Love is fled, 
Beauty and bountihead ; — ■• 
Song, she is dead I 



NOTES, 



NOTES. 



A Ballad, Etc. — Page 187. 

This poem appeared in the Saturday Review for June 
19, 1897. 

Rank and File. — Page 191. 

These stanzas appeared in The Sphere for February 
3, 1900. 

A Postscript to Goldsmith's *' Retali- 
ation." — Page 192. 

On the 22d June, 1896, these verses were read for the 
author by the Master of the Temple (Canon Ainger) at 
the dinner given in celebration of the five hundredth 
meeting of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College, 
Oxford. They then concluded with a couplet appropriate 
to that occasion. In their present place, it has been 
thought preferable to leave them — like Goldsmith's epi- 
taph on Reynolds — unfinished. 

When his pistol miss'' d fire. — Page 193. 

" He [Johnson] had recourse to the device which 
Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of 
Gibber's comedies : « There is no arguing with Johnson ; 
for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with 
the butt-end of it.' " (Hill's Boswell , 1887, ii. 100.) 
275 



276 Miscellanies, Second Series. 

You found he had nought. — Page 193. 

" Let me impress upon my readers a just and happy 
saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him [Johnson] 
well : < Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his man- 
ner ; but no man alive has a more tender heart. Jle has 
nothing of the bear but his skin.^ " (Hill's Boswellf 
1887, ii. 66.) 

*^That he made little fishes.*' — Page 194. 

" If you were to make little fishes talk, they would 
talk like whales." (Goldsmith to Johnson, Hill's Bos- 
we//, 1887, ii. 231.) 

** But read him for Style.'' — Page 194. 

" Thoughts " and " faults," or like rhymes, are to be 
found in Edwin and Angelina^ and, for the matter of that, 
in Retaliation itself. But the practice is not confined to 
Goldsmith ; it is also followed by Pope and Priox. 

Verses, Etc. — Page 195. 

These were read by the writer at the dinner on Thurs- 
day, the 25th March, 1897, Mr. Edmund Gosse being 
then President. 

^^ Our RusTUM." — Page 195. 
Field Marshal Rt. Hon. Viscount Wolseley. 

** FiRDAUsi." — Page 19^. 

Mr. Edmund Gosse, whose Firdausi in Exile^ and 
other Poems, appeared in 1885. 



Notes. 277 

To One Who Bids Me Sing. — Page 229. 

This piece was written in response to a graceful ex- 
postulatory villanelle which appeared in Temple Bar for 
February, 1895, ^'^^ ^^^ signed " Cecil Harley." 



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